THE ACCRINGTON PALS & PICNIC ON A BATTLEFIELD
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Two Year Diploma 2008-2010 A Double Bill: The Old Market, Hove. Directed by Alan Perrin
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana THE ACCRINGTON PALS, first performed by the RSC in 1981, is a play that allows us to enter the minds of the common people who lost so much during the Great War - soldiers who enlisted, in innocence and ignorance, to fight for their country and the women left behind to grieve their loss. Whelan pits the idealistic socialism of the artist, Tom, with the individualism of May's self-help philosophy. The play, inspired by the real tragedy of The Accrington Pals, is based on actual events around the Battle of the Somme and explores how the propaganda machine shaped public opinion. This absorbing play contrasts The Pals' experiences in the trenches with those of the women at home, adapting to new patterns of life and drawing together in the face of social and sexual deprivation. At times funny, at times sad, the play paints a moving and powerful picture of the changes in civilian life during wartime. PICNIC ON A BATTLEFIELD, written in 1958, is set during a battle. During a lull in the fighting at the front, soldier Zapo gets a surprise visit from his parents who have decided to cheer him up with a picnic. While bombs burst around them, the family makes a madcap picnic, joined by an enemy whom their son has captured. A series of comic situations highlights the family's impossible encounter with the Other. The play ends on a merry note with the slaughter of all concerned. Arrabal describes his plays as 'dramatised nightmares...direct manifestations of my inner world as revealed through my dreams.... The dream is my starting point'. Through experiencing this 'Picnic', we see the ultimate absurdity of war, that war erodes our morals and leads caring,compassionate citizens, who in peacetime would not harm anyone, to consent to and support the annihilation of people and property in wartime. Arrabal shows us that understanding breeds fellowship and community, fellowship and community breed reverence and respect and reverence and respect metamorphose battlefields into picnics. |
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An effective exploration of the meaning of war As Britain nears the end of a decade dogged by unpopular military action. Families at war serves to dwell on the timeless, naive hubris of the battlefield and the absurd propaganda machine that accompanies it. Scenes from peter Whelan's The Accrington Pals - the first in a double meditation on war at Hove's Old Market - told the story of the 1,100 unwitting Lancashire men who signed up to Kitchener's call for volunteers during the First World War. CAST |
