Comradely ex-soldiers stir the heart
SOLDIER ON The Other Palace ★★★★✩
FORMER military personnel are at the core of a moving, thoroughly professional show which has reached London in time for the build-up to remembrance Day. Jonathan Lewis’s soldier On is produced by the soldiers’ Arts Academy, which hopes to become ‘an Invictus Games for the arts’. One cast member is Cassidy Little, a former royal Marines Commander who lost a leg in Afghanistan in 2011. he plays a rough-humoured ex-serviceman who joins an amateur dramatics troupe. Art mirrors life for Mr Little: since recovering from his wounds he has become a busy actor.
The plot has a group of military men and women who join a drama workshop for therapeutic ends. ‘Things can be salvaged in stories,’ says harry, the civilian drama coach who has to create a watchable production out of these odds and ends. some are damaged by post-traumatic stress disorder, one has cancer, another is a down-and-out, etc. My sole reservation about this show is that no one seems to have left Army life in a good state.
harry uses improvisation and teambuilding exercises. Does that all sound a little artsy-crafty? A former sergeantmajor barks that such antics might ‘undermine soldiers by turning them into poncy, spineless actors’. A former colonel pleads with harry: ‘Let’s not disappear up our proverbials.’ The show avoids this danger thanks to fine performances unblemished by actorly self-regard.
David solomon is excellent as ringmaster harry. I had not seen solomon since he and I were at school together in the 1970s. he was an incurably optimistic, energetic sort then and he hasn’t changed a jot. shaun Johnson, whose biography says he ‘fought baddies on several tours of duty’, plays a long-haired veteran who falls gently for an autistic woman played by former Army medic hayley Thompson. One-time Army helicopter pilot Mike Prior’s character, James, transitions into Jenny (no play today is complete without a trans sub-plot). Among the non-military actors is ellie Nunn, daughter of sir Trevor Nunn and Imogen stubbs. her character is married to a severely- stressed war vet’. Miss Nunn does admirably.
At the root of soldier On is comradeship, in the military and on stage. A warm, uplifting show.