The mud and the blood
To the Green Fields Beyond is a fascinating portrait of a WWI tank crew
AMY BARRATT, The Mirror, Published: Thursday, November 16, 2006
The soldiers in To the Green Fields Beyond, Persephone Productions' offering in this month of remembrance, would never have believed that the war they are fighting would one day be known as the First World War; it was supposed to be the war to end all wars. The real men who fought that war are virtually all gone now, but young British playwright Nick Whitby has imagined what it might have been like for a few of them, a tank crew in the fall of 1918.
Aaron Turner-playing the sombre flip-side of his khaki-clad cartoon character in Johnny Canuck and the Last Burlesque-is the reluctant leader of the eight-soldier crew comprised of men from all branches of the military and all corners of the Commonwealth. Turner's character, Child, at one point suggests that there have been two wars in this Great War, separated by the introduction, in 1916, of tanks. He says (or the playwright says through him) that history will only remember the first: the war of trenches and cannon fodder, of hundreds and thousands gunned down at a time. Despite frequent mechanical breakdowns, the tanks were a godsend at first, acting as a suit of armour for the crew. By 1918, however, the Germans had developed bullets that could pierce the slow-moving beasts. The tank crews' story is little known and Whitby's play is a fascinating portrait of a group of men who rely on one another for their lives.
In a fine ensemble cast of 10 men and one woman, Christopher Moore, for his performance as Cockney jokester Duff, and Dustin Ruck for his fiery intensity as Venus, are standouts. The production, directed by Gabrielle Soskin, has an intimacy that is effectively disquieting for the spectator. We cannot help asking, faced with their moral dilemmas, what we ourselves would choose.
When it was first done in London in 2001-by film director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) -some of the critics found the piece too sentimental or manipulative. Maybe they couldn't swallow the portrayal of soldiers fighting a war as basically decent human beings. On the contrary, this play attempts to burst a bubble of sentimentality that hovers over the Great War for many of us. How often have we seen WWI soldiers popping pills to calm their terrors or lining up for quickies with a tired Belgian prostitute? Just as the tank has to get through "the mud and the blood" to reach "the green fields beyond," so this play has to wade through doubt, fear and bodily functions before achieving a kind of sad nobility.
© The Mirror (Montreal) 2006
The soldiers in To the Green Fields Beyond, Persephone Productions' offering in this month of remembrance, would never have believed that the war they are fighting would one day be known as the First World War; it was supposed to be the war to end all wars. The real men who fought that war are virtually all gone now, but young British playwright Nick Whitby has imagined what it might have been like for a few of them, a tank crew in the fall of 1918.
Aaron Turner-playing the sombre flip-side of his khaki-clad cartoon character in Johnny Canuck and the Last Burlesque-is the reluctant leader of the eight-soldier crew comprised of men from all branches of the military and all corners of the Commonwealth. Turner's character, Child, at one point suggests that there have been two wars in this Great War, separated by the introduction, in 1916, of tanks. He says (or the playwright says through him) that history will only remember the first: the war of trenches and cannon fodder, of hundreds and thousands gunned down at a time. Despite frequent mechanical breakdowns, the tanks were a godsend at first, acting as a suit of armour for the crew. By 1918, however, the Germans had developed bullets that could pierce the slow-moving beasts. The tank crews' story is little known and Whitby's play is a fascinating portrait of a group of men who rely on one another for their lives.
In a fine ensemble cast of 10 men and one woman, Christopher Moore, for his performance as Cockney jokester Duff, and Dustin Ruck for his fiery intensity as Venus, are standouts. The production, directed by Gabrielle Soskin, has an intimacy that is effectively disquieting for the spectator. We cannot help asking, faced with their moral dilemmas, what we ourselves would choose.
When it was first done in London in 2001-by film director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) -some of the critics found the piece too sentimental or manipulative. Maybe they couldn't swallow the portrayal of soldiers fighting a war as basically decent human beings. On the contrary, this play attempts to burst a bubble of sentimentality that hovers over the Great War for many of us. How often have we seen WWI soldiers popping pills to calm their terrors or lining up for quickies with a tired Belgian prostitute? Just as the tank has to get through "the mud and the blood" to reach "the green fields beyond," so this play has to wade through doubt, fear and bodily functions before achieving a kind of sad nobility.
© The Mirror (Montreal) 2006
