The irony of watching a play that questions the futility of war wasn’t lost on last night’s Oxford Playhouse audience.
Set in the trenches of WW1, Private Peaceful ably demonstrates how two innocent and assuming young men, brothers Charlie and Tommo, came to be entrenched in a surprise war of attrition that seemingly arose from nowhere.
Voluntarily ripped from their homes, traditions, jobs and families and sent to fight a foreign enemy, with all the hindsight of history before us, it was particularly poignant viewing in these troubled times.
Private Peaceful is also about those left behind, their mother (played so ably by Emma Manton), and childhood friend Molly (the joyful Liyah Summers) who goes on to have Charlie’s baby.
If there was ever a clearer example of lions led by donkeys, Private Peaceful is it
Contrasting the inherent carnage and inescapable bleakness of the battlefield with a rural and idyllic landscape, this Michael Morpurgo adaption by Simon Reade, may not have the sweeping grandeur of War Horse, but echoes its sentimentality, horror and waste admirably in this more intimate portrayal.
And so we watch the criminally young, and hopelessly inexperienced, teenager Tommo, played so poignantly by Daniel Rainford, being slowly broken by an uncaring and unrelenting war machine, alongside his older brother Charlie (Tom Kanji).
Narrated by Tommo from what appears to be a cell as he waits for morning to break, he passes the time by replaying his childhood in Devon alongside the events leading to what appears to be his death sentence.
What Morpurgo, and Simon Read’s adaption, focuses on however, is the historical context, providing a reality and a face to the nearly 900,000 men killed, missing or presumed dead in combat theaters from 1914–1918, while explaining how they came to be there.
It also offers a tangible example of who these soldiers actually were and where they came from, what it was like to be there and the consequences of disobedience and mental breakdowns. Shell shock has no place in Private peaceful’s world.
The set which shares WW1 trenches with Devon’s rural idyll, is both hauntingly bleak and abjectly uplifting at the same time. And although one of the cast was felled by Covid yesterday, the multi-faceted cast swallowed his multiple roles seamlessly, so that you’d never have known they were one down.
If there was ever a clearer example of lions led by donkeys, Private Peaceful is it. Educational, haunting and real, it’s a brilliant play.
Private Peaceful is at Oxford Playhouse until Saturday. Go to https://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/events/private-peaceful
Katherine MacAlister
