This fresh take on Morpurgo’s tragic tale reminds us of tougher times
Private Peaceful
★★★★★
By Dominic Cavendish
There’s nothing quiet or theatrically tranquil about this lightning-fast staging of Michael Morpurgo’s 2003 novel recounting the tragically brief life story of a fictional 17-year-old youth court-martialed on the Western Front in 1916.
The exhilarating speed of the hour-long piece – a free-fall through memory on the eve of execution, in contrast to the book’s more leisurely retrospect – reflects the theatre it has sprung from. The Barn keeps stealing a march on its rivals and is the first regional playhouse to open for a sustained (Covid-secure) indoor run.
The casting innovation – placing an actress (Emily Costello) in the army boots filled in the 2012 film by George Mackay – is part and parcel of the Barn’s innate daring too. More than 330,000 people have engaged with their digital content since lockdown; they’re fearlessly 21st-century. That said, my big concern going in was that this gender-blind slant on Simon Reade’s 2004 solo adaptation (further reconceived here for two players) might remove a layer of historical verisimilitude without adding fresh insights, distancing us from the character instead of drawing us in.
My misgivings were laid to rest, though, by the bravura energy and tender vulnerability of Costello’s performance as Tommo Peaceful. Sporting workingman’s cap and braces, she evokes a boyishness while eschewing male-impersonation – symbolising a spirit of youthfulness and hopefulness. Her act of empathy, putting herself in the place of a lad compelled to sacrifice all, goes hand in hand with our imaginative engagement. The narration is delivered in a breathless continuous present, diving between formative days in Devonshire and the countdown to the firing squad, a school bell clanging out the shifts in time.
Director Alexander Knott musters an adrenal rush and due sense of poignancy through old-fashioned actorly skill and sly technical sophistication – pin-sharp lighting amid a gas-attack’s worth of haze. Marshalling a battalion of musical instruments – rain stick and rattles, tin whistles and tambourines – James Demaine populates the stage in a mass of roles too, among them a snarling school bully and an early airman, comically shaking his legs to denote the judder of a primitive flying machine. The dominant scenic element is a batch of crates: archetypally fringy, but this would still fit snugly, all the same, amid a resurgent West End.
All in all, a timely reminder that this nation has confronted far worse than enforced face masks.