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. De...