Review: New Alexandra Theatre, Birdsong

As the chaplain delivers his final sermon, men of all ranks and stations take their positions: line-abreast; to ladders, to death...

I first saw the stage adaptation of Sebastian Faulks' novel Birdsong in 2013. Five years ago: before I had studied much about the First World War, or war literature; before the 100 years centenary had begun, with all its acts of remembrance. Seeing Birdsong again in 2018 offered not only a chance to see how the production had evolved, but how my perception of it had altered with all that I had learned and experienced over the past years - these poignant years of memorial. Here's my thoughts.

When I recall seeing Birdsong for the first time, back in 2013, one scene stands out for me above all others. It falls just before the interval, at the point in the story where the characters - Stephen Wraysford (Tom Kay) and his battalion - are about to climb 'over the top' at the Battle of the Somme. Final prayers are said, last letters are written, before the men take their places in the line. The private soldiers fix their bayonets to their cumbersome bolt-action rifles; the officers pull out revolvers, while the Colonel draws his ceremonial sword. The futility grows more and more, ridiculously so: how can you expect to survive against machine guns with a sword? Fear of what is to come becomes too much for the young lad Tipper (Alfie Browne-Sykes), who breaks down in sobs, pulls out his revolver, and shoots himself dead. None of the other men flinch.

This situation, these people, these emotions - we've seen something of them before, in the poetry of war poet Wilfred Owen. Even as the battalion stand there, 'the front line withers'; the 'men, gaps for filling: /
losses, who might have fought / longer' ('Insensibility'). Young Tipper recalls to us the shell-shocked boy from 'The Dead-Beat', or the wounded soldier in 'The Sentry':

'"I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids...
[...]
And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
Renewed most horribly whenever crumps
Pummelled the roof...'

The scene ends at the blowing of Stephen's whistle, as his men:

'Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge'

leaving us suspended, wondering who 'fell away past this world’s verge' and who would be 'crawling slowly back' in the second half of the play. Stephen is counted amongst the latter, scarred further by the 'superhuman inhumanities' he had to commit in order to survive ('Spring Offensive'). These ghosts - the guilt-ridden survivors, the destroyed youth, the ranks upon ranks of 'cannon fodder' - are all men Wilfred Owen had lived, fought, and died alongside. That such characters appear again in Faulks' novel, and then in the stage adaptation of Birdsong, is proof of how these ghosts haunt us still.

As well as reviewing the production of Birdsong I saw at the New Alexandra Theatre, I'd also like to write about the 'Wilfred Owen and the Great War' event at the 65th Stratford-upon-Avon poetry festival. The event, commemorating 100 years since the poet's death in 1918, was a simple but moving series of readings, featuring Owen's poems and his letters, further reminiscences by Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, as well as war reports and newspaper articles. All were beautifully read by RSC actors Dame Siân Phillips and Alex Waldmann.

Of course, we have to be careful when comparing works written from real experience (such as Owen's poetry and letters) to works written as imaginative reconstruction (such as Faulks' Birdsong). During my studies into war literature, it became important to clarify memory from remembrance, truth from myth. Owen's work is of memory, of truth - he writes from direct experience with the conflict and those affected by it, including himself. Faulks' work (and the stageplay which followed), is a work of remembrance, an addition to the growing mythology of the First World War. No matter the quantity or quality of the research Faulks undertook, Birdsong will only ever be art in response to the war-as-history, rather than art born from the war-as-experience. We must be sensitive when comparing the ghosts of Owen's life, to the echoes in Faulks' fiction. Therefore, in this review, I'll be comparing them by broader aspects: acts, such as letter-writing; places, such as the tunnels; and attitudes towards the war and its legacy.

Letters

Prevalent in both Birdsong and 'Wilfred Owen and the Great War', was the importance of letters to soldiers at the Front. In the play, we are witness to a number of letters written between tunneller Jack Firebrace (Tim Treloar) and his wife back at home. As well as the expected affections, and kind chit-chat about food parcels and knitted socks, the letters update Jack on the progress of his young son, John, who is struggling through illness. John's condition quickly deteriorates, until, in a tragic reversal of positions, the father receives a letter informing him of his son's death. Before the men go 'over the top' at the Somme, Stephen, Tipper, Jack, and fellow tunneller Arthur (Simon Lloyd) narrate their fraught, perhaps final, letters to their loved ones. Jack's exchanges his usual pleasantries with his wife, as does Arthur's; Stephen miserably pines after his lost love, Isabelle (Madeleine Knight). But it is Tipper's performance, once again, that is most harrowing, as the boy desperately relays his fears to his mother. Letters are a central and reoccurring theme in the play, as they are in the novel - it is though letters (amongst other memoriams such as diary entries, military records, and cenotaphs) that Stephen and Isabelle's granddaughter, Elizabeth, researches the lives of her grandparents.

It is through letters, too, that we have discovered more about the life of Wilfred Owen. The event in Stratford was driven by readings of his letters, interspersed between the poetry: letters between Owen and his beloved mother; Owen and Graves, and Graves and Sassoon. These little glimpses into the poet's personal correspondence enrich our understanding of his war experience, his attitude towards the conflict, and the promise of his poetry as seen by his peers. Owen, despite being the most widely-read of the war poets, does not have a huge portfolio - he could, and probably would, have written much more had he survived the war. What we see in his poems are condensed snapshots of his war experience - the horrors, the outrage, the futility. His letters reveal to us the smaller things, such as his everyday duties, his journeys to and from the front lines, and his admiration of Sassoon. Both with Birdsong and with Owen, letters remind us of the tedious and all-consuming nature of the war, reminding us that, even before the slaughter, families were being separated and lives were in upheaval. The importance of letters cannot be understated: without them, important perspectives of the war might be lost, or misunderstood, by those who record that history today.

Tunnels

In one the most piteous of Owen's poems, 'Strange Meeting', the speaker believes himself to have stumbled 'down some profound dull tunnel', which he later understands to be Hell. He meets and converses with another wretched soul, who announces:

'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .'

It is revealed that, in life, the speaker and the stranger were enemies: the latter being killed in their encounter, and the former dying and joining him in Hell the next day. Yet before we learn this, the stranger's monologue conveys to us an attitude that could belong to either side - that of 'the pity of war, the pity war distilled'. Indeed, he speaks of their war experience as collective, announcing 'whatever hope is yours, / was my life also'; alluding to the terrible stalemate where 'none will break ranks, though nations trek from progress'. The plural 'nations' tars both the Allies and the Central Powers with war-mongering and continual, unnecessary slaughter. The poem ends with the stranger inviting the speaker to go towards death together, with the collective pronoun 'us' conveying a sorrowful solidarity between once 'enem[ies]', now 'friend[s]'.

A similar scene is presented to us in Birdsong. The tunnels beneath No Man's Land, which do not often feature in war literature but are explored extensively in Birdsong, are cleverly represented on stage. During a black-out, a wooden frame is moved forwards from the back of the stage to create the supporting timbers of the tunnels. Their progress lit by the oppressive red glow of handheld lanterns, the actors crawl through these frames which give the perspective of a length of tunnel. Though these passages lack walls or ceilings, the laborious breathing of the actors and the anxiety etched on their gleaming, glowing faces, are enough to convince us of the packed earth bearing down on all sides. The stage becomes something of Owen's 'profound full tunnel', the characters, like those men trapped in Owen's Hell, are terrified, with 'fixed eyes, / lifting distressful hands'.

In the final scenes, after being trapped in the tunnels and frantically trying to blow out an escape route, Stephen comes face to face with a German soldier. Both are armed and terror-stricken, but stunned by this unexpected encounter, a stalemate is reached and neither moves to kill the other. In a silent agreement, both Stephen and the stranger drop their weapons, as it is revealed that the war is over. 'No guns thumped, or down the flues made moan' - but it is peace, not purgatory, which has been reached. Though Stephen lunges at the German, it is not to 'jab', nor does the German 'parry' - they embrace, their unity and exhaustion an enactment of Owen's final lines. Yet, unlike Owen's 'encumbered sleepers', Stephen and his companion cannot sleep; being alive, there is work to be done, trying to fix the damaged world which Owen claims cannot be salvaged:

'Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.'  

Attitudes

Whether the world could be fixed or not, the final speech of Birdsong, delivered by Stephen, expresses the belief that an understanding of the war will not continue beyond the lives of those who experienced it:

'No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand. When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them. We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings. We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.'

These lines could be read as a lament, as one damaged generation mourns for itself and its inability to express their truths to those who come after them. I agree that no one today can truly comprehend the experiences of those who served, not only in the trenches, but also beyond the front lines, in hospitals, in the air and under the sea. Yet to me, this statement reads as a pact: 'we will not tell them' suggests an unwillingness rather than an inability. Out of choice, the war generation will not tell their stories, nor will they be consoled by allowing kindness to reach them.

Wilfred Owen's attitude towards future generations is a stark contrast to the above. In his 'Preface', drafted in 1918 with the intention of fronting his collection (which was posthumously published in 1921), Owen announces his subject to be war and pity:

'Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry.
The subject of it is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation,
This is in no sense consolatory.
They may be to the next.
All the poet can do to-day is to warn.'

Rather than seal away his thoughts and experiences of war, Owen places these as his primary focus, allowing them to drive his poetry. By writing, Owen does more than simply talk about his experiences - he preserves them, allowing them to become an educational warning to future generations. He accepts that such preservation will be of no help to his own generation, but acknowledges the need for consolation to those who will inherit the damaged world. Despite living through and ultimately dying in one of the bloodiest conflicts of humankind, Owen had hope for the future, and a desire to help the people of the future to understand. Perhaps that is why his poetry is so widely taught and his life so widely celebrated today. 

Birdsong, upon a second viewing, is still as powerful and poignant as before. In its entirety it is thought-provoking, but in those few moments of high emotion, it packs a punch which makes it difficult to forget. 

Birdsong is on tour until 21 July. To see if it is coming to a theatre near you, check here.


Photo credit:
Left: The company of Birdsong, photographs by Jack Ladenburg, found here. Photograph of Jack Firebrace and Stephen Wraysford, found here.
Right: Photograph of Wilfred Owen, found here. Wilfred Owen's letter to his mother, found here. Photograph of Allied tunnels, found here. Wilfred Owen's hand-written preface, found here.

All of Wilfred Owen's poems quoted from the Poetry Foundation. 
Quote from Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks found here.
Wilfred Owen's 'Preface' found here.