Tale of absurdity of war told with humour
WORK ON PLAY LED HISTORY TEACHER TO DELVE INTO PAST
WHEN history teacher Matthew Hope joined the team staging a First World War play, it set the scene for some reallife research.
Matthew is directing Blackadder Goes Forth, which opens today at the People’s Theatre in Newcastle and continues until Saturday, November 3.
He said: “As a history teacher I have always been interested in the First World War, and we teach it at school.
“With doing the play and the centenary of the Armistice coming up, it made me wonder about my own family’s history at that time. I started researching and I was fascinated by what I found.“
Matthew, who lives in Benton in Newcastle and is also deputy headmaster at Valley Gardens Middle School in Whitley Bay, found that great grandfather Corporal George Reginald Hope was stationed in France throughout the war, and was a motor driver and mechanic with the Army Service Corps.
“Crossing the channel with the British Expeditionary Force at the beginning of the war in August 1914 made George an Old Contemptible,” said Matthew, “a nickname adopted by members of the BEF after the Kaiser dismissed them as ‘a contemptible little army.’”
Corporal Hope served in France until April 1919. “I wondered how he felt about what he would have seen while serving through the whole war,” said Matthew,
One of Matthew’s family keepsakes is a War Office certificate dated 1917, promoting his other great grandfather, Joseph Brown, to warrant officer.
Joseph was a company sergeant major in the special reserve of the Royal
Welsh Fusiliers and a veteran of the Boer War.
“He was an older soldier and had been a soldier all his life and so was probably involved in training,” said Matthew.
“It’s no secret that the show has a poignant ending, reflecting the sacrifice made by a generation of men. I’m thankful that those two ancestors of mine survived.
“On stage are the familiar characters we know so well, and the adventures of the cynical Captain Edmund Blackadder, in his forlorn quest to survive the lethal buffoonery of all who surround him.
“For all its pithy witticisms and knockabout humour, Blackadder Goes Forth treads a sensitive line between the gallows humour of British soldiers and the tragedy of their sacrifice in the trenches of Flanders.
“There is pathos and black humour and the absurdity of war, but it is very respectful towards the soldiers.
“We’re proud to do justice to both in our staging of this memorable classic, presented in support of Comic Relief and to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice.“
Tickets for the 7.30pm play are £14 (concessions £11.50) on 0191 265 5020 or www.peoplestheatre.co.uk