First World War drama puts idealism to the test
MATT RADZ, The Gazette, Published: Saturday, November 11, 2006
The warriors in Nick Whitby's 2002 First World War drama are an eight-man motley crew riding into the future inside modernity's gift to warfare, the tank. Given better than even odds that they'll roast to death, they know they're just "eight stiffs in a tin box."
To the Green Fields Beyond, staged by Persephone Productions at La Chapelle, remembers a war fought long ago and far away by a now nearly extinct generation.
War is not all hate, death and profiteering; it also was made for extreme male bonding. The play opens on the soldiers as they pass packets of army-issue morphine around the campfire, just to relax and maybe get some kip before next morning's battle.
A crew member named Cossum has just arrived with a satchel filled with links of mystery and a loaf of japan. There's also a rabbit pie for the young lions to share. Huh?
Good thing the program includes a glossary of the colourful slang developed by the first British army tank crews. Like the typical unit in Whitby's play, they included Sikhs and fighters from the West Indies.
Thus Cossum, played by Neil Napier, has brought back sausage (mystery) and some bread (japan from du pain). Rabbit pie is a prostitute, sometimes referred to as "a nifty."
Another camp follower at the stage bivouac is an American ghoul (war correspondent), whose crass questions provoke hair-raising answers and a conflict with the crew's top officer, played with the necessary presence by Aaron Turner.
The officer is more like a summer-camp counsellor since the crew operates as a tiny democracy, small enough for everyone to care and be heard. What they're talking about is the certain death that awaits them the following day, before they put a desertion plan to a vote. A grave military crime, but since the tanks worked better as a weapon of homefront propaganda than in the field, "mechanical failure" was easy to fake and frequent. (Back home, the British press variously referred to the newly invented tanks as flame-spouting "behemoths" and "juggernauts," "flat-footed monsters" and even "polychromatic toads" or "diplodocus galumphants.")
The truth was that the galumphants flipped over in the mud and Germans soon developed armor-piercing ordnance.
Whitby's piece is strong on atmosphere. It eludes the simplistic fist-waving of "War, what is it good for?" by dramatizing not just the horror felt by men enduring extremes of noise and heat inside stinking cockpits, but also the sublime near-death exhilarations of combat.
As their last dawn nears, the bright-eyed idealism of these young lions so willing to die in their conviction that theirs is "a war to end all wars" grows more tragic and heartbreaking.
This is the 10th show by Persephone Productions since it was founded in 2000 by theatre educator and director Gabrielle Soskin as a platform for emerging stage artists. The company already has established a reputation for excellence and continues to reach higher.
Tristan D. Lalla rates notice as a Jamaican member of the tank crew, but Soskin has again directed a very strong ensemble effort with a cast of 11, which also features Colin Lalonde, Timothy Diamond, Toma Weideman, Alexandra Valassis, Dustin Ruck, Frayne McCarthy, Christopher Moore and David Potter.
To the Green Fields Beyond by Nick Whitby, directed by Gabrielle Soskin for Persephone Productions, runs until Nov. 19 at Theatre la Chapelle, 3700 St. Dominique St.; 514-743-2398. Shows are at 8 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays and at 2 p.m. on Sundays.
mradz@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006
The warriors in Nick Whitby's 2002 First World War drama are an eight-man motley crew riding into the future inside modernity's gift to warfare, the tank. Given better than even odds that they'll roast to death, they know they're just "eight stiffs in a tin box."
To the Green Fields Beyond, staged by Persephone Productions at La Chapelle, remembers a war fought long ago and far away by a now nearly extinct generation.
War is not all hate, death and profiteering; it also was made for extreme male bonding. The play opens on the soldiers as they pass packets of army-issue morphine around the campfire, just to relax and maybe get some kip before next morning's battle.
A crew member named Cossum has just arrived with a satchel filled with links of mystery and a loaf of japan. There's also a rabbit pie for the young lions to share. Huh?
Good thing the program includes a glossary of the colourful slang developed by the first British army tank crews. Like the typical unit in Whitby's play, they included Sikhs and fighters from the West Indies.
Thus Cossum, played by Neil Napier, has brought back sausage (mystery) and some bread (japan from du pain). Rabbit pie is a prostitute, sometimes referred to as "a nifty."
Another camp follower at the stage bivouac is an American ghoul (war correspondent), whose crass questions provoke hair-raising answers and a conflict with the crew's top officer, played with the necessary presence by Aaron Turner.
The officer is more like a summer-camp counsellor since the crew operates as a tiny democracy, small enough for everyone to care and be heard. What they're talking about is the certain death that awaits them the following day, before they put a desertion plan to a vote. A grave military crime, but since the tanks worked better as a weapon of homefront propaganda than in the field, "mechanical failure" was easy to fake and frequent. (Back home, the British press variously referred to the newly invented tanks as flame-spouting "behemoths" and "juggernauts," "flat-footed monsters" and even "polychromatic toads" or "diplodocus galumphants.")
The truth was that the galumphants flipped over in the mud and Germans soon developed armor-piercing ordnance.
Whitby's piece is strong on atmosphere. It eludes the simplistic fist-waving of "War, what is it good for?" by dramatizing not just the horror felt by men enduring extremes of noise and heat inside stinking cockpits, but also the sublime near-death exhilarations of combat.
As their last dawn nears, the bright-eyed idealism of these young lions so willing to die in their conviction that theirs is "a war to end all wars" grows more tragic and heartbreaking.
This is the 10th show by Persephone Productions since it was founded in 2000 by theatre educator and director Gabrielle Soskin as a platform for emerging stage artists. The company already has established a reputation for excellence and continues to reach higher.
Tristan D. Lalla rates notice as a Jamaican member of the tank crew, but Soskin has again directed a very strong ensemble effort with a cast of 11, which also features Colin Lalonde, Timothy Diamond, Toma Weideman, Alexandra Valassis, Dustin Ruck, Frayne McCarthy, Christopher Moore and David Potter.
To the Green Fields Beyond by Nick Whitby, directed by Gabrielle Soskin for Persephone Productions, runs until Nov. 19 at Theatre la Chapelle, 3700 St. Dominique St.; 514-743-2398. Shows are at 8 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays and at 2 p.m. on Sundays.
mradz@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006
