Regeneration - York Theatre Royal

Regeneration – York Theatre Royal

Three/Five

First off, as a disclaimer, any knowledge I have of the First World War comes pretty much from primary school History and History Boys by Alan Bennett. We always studied Europe up until WWI and mainly dismantled Nazi Germany each year I did History GCSE and A-Level (so maybe I’d be better off with Albert Speer). Fortunately, a play about Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen seemed within my reach – although I spent the whole thing waiting for Little Drummer Boy so clearly I didn’t pay much attention to History Boys.

Secondly, I find that, when it comes to History, I follow in Irwin’s footsteps and am peculiarly detached. World War I is a senseless loss of life but it’s hard to get your head round that amount of (seemingly) needless death. So sentimental performances seem more like moving tributes rather than theatre per se.

The play itself, then, begins with Sassoon reading his ‘Declaration’ to the board – denouncing military conflict – after serving in the Army and discovering his poetic voice. He is then moved to a War hospital (specialising in shell-shocked soldiers) where he meets several other patients, and eventually, Wilfred Owen, a promising young poet with a hero-worship love of Sassoon. His doctor, Rivers, is a neurologist, interested in rehabilitation and treating men like human beings and they bond over their disillusionment with the current war.

Regeneration captures the anti-war feeling of Sassoon and I guessed early on that War would come out badly in the whole thing. There were not two sides to this play; we are told exactly where we are heading and I found myself wanting a bit more ‘grey’. After seeing 1984 last week, I realised how important subtlety can be to an argument. In Regeneration, the dialogue between the characters often leant towards being speech-y and lacked any nuances. It’s not that I personally feel pro-War, it’s just that the best discussions are often two-sided.

What I loved about Regeneration was that it pushed to the forefront a couple of important issues that felt relevant today: mental illness and the ‘war’ effect. I think that the line is thin between being a historical, sentiment play and presenting us with relevant themes but, on the whole, I found myself thinking a lot more about the impending vote on troops in Iraq and airstrikes on ISIS than I did about Sassoon’s tragedy.

The people the play shows us, all officers, are scarred from their experiences of war. Owen, who is pitched perfectly by Garmon Rhys by the by, spent three days lying amongst the dead bodies of his friends. Sassoon and Prior also struggle with the guilt of surviving the war so far – that Sassoon’s nickname was ‘Mad Jack’, because of his reckless feats of bravery, shows his mental state towards the end of the war. The scenes that show other types of ‘cures’ at the time are particularly shocking, both in their brutality and their lack of empathy for the patients.

While some of the themes were explored thoroughly and presented very well, some of the themes that I find myself interested in were missing or under-explored: lions led by donkeys, class inequality, xenophobia etc. Sassoon was placed on a bit of a pedestal for me, his flaws being the type of flaws that you don’t really care about. Similarly, I found the acting to be very mixed; there were some really great performances but any scene with more than two characters in felt stilted, and very unnatural. I wanted to believe it was a directorial choice but there seemed no evidence of that. Dinnertime at the Ward, for example, was devoid of the warmth you might expect to accompany the dialogue.

I thought Simon Godwin’s direction was good, though I wasn’t too keen on the War flashbacks that seemed intent on making an audience jump rather than being insightful to the plight of these men – see Peaky Blinders’ version of the same idea with Danny Whizz Bang. The lighting and set (Lee Curran and Alex Eales) were simple and did the job they were intended to, mixing together the often short scenes with speed and ease, and Godwin’s transitions managed to keep the atmosphere of the scenes that preceded them – a nice touch I thought.

Overall, a nice piece but I found myself wondering if a piece about war should ever just be entertainment. The effect on the soldiers is clear but the production lacked the bite I would have hoped for, in order to make its point more effectively.