OBSERVE THE SONS OF ULSTER MARCHING TOWARDS THE SOMME To 18 July.
London.
OBSERVE THE SONS OF ULSTER MARCHING TOWARDS THE SOMME
by Frank McGuinness.
Hampstead Theatre To 18 July 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm & I July 2.30pm.
Audio-described 11 July 3pm.
Captioned 14 July.
Post-show discussion 15 July.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7722 9301.
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 July.
Perfectly -pitched revival of play portraying Ulstermen’s mindset.
I doubt the Kaiser’s bullets and shells, sailing over the Somme, distinguished between parts of the Allied Forces in 1916. But from this side the trenches local loyalties mattered. There were the Pals brigades, like that from Accrington dramatised by Peter Whelan. And the Ulster Protestants for whom death on the Somme was part of a determined No Surrender to any threat to their culture, history or way of life.
Somme or Boyne, the Sons of Ulster march determinedly in Frank McGuinness’s play, which begins with a look back in anger, angry old survivor Kenneth Pyper recalling the hard-faced men whose names he’s not forgotten as their silent figures slowly emerge. In contrast his younger self deploys the same wiry physical strength in playfulness and mockery underwritten by anger and the confidence of class. He’s officer-material slumming with the men, a sexual as well as social outsider.
McGuinness shows how this rebel is drawn back to his cause, and his tribe, becoming the man we know will spend his life ploughing his father’s land. The theme’s worked out in a three-part structure. From a Long, Short and Tallish first scene where aggression and loyalties slowly emerge through the nervous camaraderie of competitive masculinity, which Kenneth confronts ironically, the play moves to a stretch of home leave, developing the original pairings, plus the new one being nervously formed on sexual attraction between Kenneth and David Craig.
This central section’s key to the play. It’s also the most dramatically static, with an over-riding tone of conflict and challenge. But it explores the granite consciousness apparent in the opening line-up of the dead, and moves the characters with a deeper sense of Ulster identity to the Somme. The battle is preceded by the men’s re-enactment of the Orangemen’s iconic Battle of the Boyne.
The fifth and final production of Hampstead Theatre’s 50th-anniversary spring and summer, it shows, like the season’s fine new play The Berlin Hanover Express, Ulster Protestant pride in tribal identity. John Dove’s excellently acted production is perfect, giving every aspect of the men’s dynamic an appropriate pace, timing and intensity
Kenneth Pyper, as an old man: James Hayes.
Kenneth Pyper as a young man: Richard Dormer.
David Craig: Eugene O’Hare.
George Anderson: John Hollingworth.
Nat McIlwaine: Mark Holgate.
Christopher Roulston: Billy Carter.
Martin Crawford: Michael Legge.
William Moore: Owen Sharpe.
John Millen: Chris Garner.
Director: John Dove.
Designer: Michael Taylor.
Lighting: Mick Hughes.
Sound: Simon Baker.
Composer: Claire van Kampen.
Fight director: Terry King.
2009-06-26 16:32:27