Birdsong – Leeds Playhouse

There’s been plenty of novels about the First World War, but Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong was one of the best, blending a love story and the cost of that conflict’s carnage, so it was a natural for a stage adaptation.

It’s now over a decade since Rachel Wagstaff’s first adaptation of Birdsong, and all the Tommies who fought in the so called war to end all wars are now dead. Ironically the world still seems intent on blowing itself up, so Wagstaff’s reworked revival with a stark new set by Richard Kent was a timely reminder that war is a terrible business that solves nothing.

This three act – and rare two interval – version opened with callow Englishman Stephen Wraysford visiting France to view a struggling factory whereupon he fell helplessly in love with the owner’s wife Isabelle. Despite his innocence he suddenly turned into a Lothario, whereupon we were treated to a fairly explicit and slightly cringy sex scene before they headed off into the sunset. This act did teeter on the edge of melodrama at times, but stage newcomer James Esler and the experienced Charlie Russell as a feisty Isabelle made their love affair convincing.

Next, we caught up with Wraysford, played with great sensitivity by Esler on a very promising debut in a big lead role, he was a closed off infantry officer on the Western Front, who was clearly now a bit bonkers for reasons pulled together in the final act.  Although it was not entirely clear if his strange behaviour and refusal to leave the front, even after nearly dying, was due to what happened with Isabelle, or what we now know to be PTSD, treated as cowardice back then.

Wraysford’s company were fighting alongside a group of sappers digging a tunnel under enemy lines to blow the beastly Boche up, and the strong ensemble came into their own as they used music and gallows humour to show the camaraderie of miners facing almost certain death, Former Eastenders stalwart Max Bowden played cheeky Cockney sapper Jack Firebrace, and was pick of a strong cast subtly mining the sapper’s inner turmoil.

Birdsong was at its strongest at the front and thanks to some well-designed lighting by Jason Taylor, plenty of smoke and loads of big bangs during the big battle scenes they managed to some extent to capture some of the chaos and terror of life in the trenches and underground. The scene where the men read their letters home before the attack, and the sound of one squaddie hyperventilating before going over the top were both really haunting. Those scenes at the front were reminiscent of the emotional punch to the guts delivered in Blackadder’s classic final scene.

Alastair Wheatley’s direction kept the complicated narrative moving along in military-like fashion helping us reach our objective. He deployed a simple stage effect and some raw acting to give a sense of the sapper’s claustrophobic subterranean hell, and the mental toll it must have taken on those men.  Special mention to military advisor Tony Green who managed to make the cast look and act like soldiers rather than a bunch of luvvies playing at it, which can sadly be all too often the case.

There was a reason Birdsong sold three million copies, and this faithful production helped us understand that instead of being the war to end all wars it was actually a green light for the sort of genocidal misery we have seen unleashed since the guns went silent in November 1918.

Birdsong is in the Quarry Theatre until Saturday 21st September and touring. To book www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk  or 0113 2137700.

Reviewer: Paul Clarke

Reviewed: 17th September 2024

North West End UK Rating: