Theatre Royal Bath until 30 November
Words by Melissa Blease
31 years have passed since English author Sebastian Faulks’ epic, sprawling masterpiece Birdsong was first published. A best-seller from the get-go, the novel offered readers a deeper philosophical and experiential understanding of WW1 by eschewing the voices of politicians and historians in favour of putting ‘real’ people at the heart of the tale and illuminating the traumas, losses and pain that the first genocidal event of the century inflicted on the world.
This new production of writer Rachel Wagstaff’s 2010 stage adaptation (developed in association with the Royal British Legion) brings the novel back to life in the way that only the very best modern British theatre productions can: impactful, insightful and emotive; thought-provoking, poignant and beautiful.
From the brief opening scene on a bench in a modern-day French cemetery where a young Englishman tells a gardener that he’s there to find out more about his great-grandfather, a WW1 soldier, we’re elegantly transported back in time to circa early-1900s Amiens, France, to meet the Azaire family, owners of a financially-troubled fabric production factory.
Factory head honcho René Azaire desperately needs funding in order to keep his business thriving; enter strident young Englishman Stephen Wraysford, representative of an English factory with professional investment interest.
We quickly learn that René is not a nice man; he’s a bullying, controlling patriarch with little regard for the welfare of his workers… or his wife Isabelle. Despite Lisette, René’s teenage daughter from a previous marriage, making her crush on Stephen all-too-apparent, Isabelle captures Stephen’s heart… and his feelings are reciprocated.
By the time act two opens, WW1 has begun and we’re deep in the trenches with Stephen, now a British Army officer. He doesn’t know what happened to Isabelle in the chaos that ensued after the couple made a pact of running away together, and allows his regimentary duties to dominate his life-in-mourning for his lost love.
But as emotionally isolated as he may appear, Stephen forges a close friendship with Jack Firebrace – one of thousands of Royal Engineer tunnellers (or “sewer rats”, as the harsh language of the WW1 trenches would have it) responsible for digging tunnels deep beneath the surface of no man’s land towards the enemy frontline, ready to be filled with explosives to blow the German trenches to smithereens.
Act three, and WW1 is finally over but Stephen’s post-war life is yet to begin; he’s still in France, still searching for Isabelle, searching for answers… and searching for peace.
So, that’s around 124,000 words of the Birdland novel distilled into a handful of paragraphs. Attempting to summarise the theatre production may, I fear, do Faulks’ story even less justice; director Alastair Whatley, however, does it proud.
Leading a strong ensemble cast, James Esler brings remarkable depth, and sensitive profundity to his role as Stephen Wraysford in a remarkable performance that completely belies the fact that he’s making his stage debut here, and Charlie Russell is, by turn, heartbreakingly vulnerable and staunchly steadfast as Isabelle, the woman for whom fate has no mercy. Sargon Yelda as Isabelle’s cruel, insensitive husband makes full sense of the reasons for her despondent despair, and Max Bowden is an entirely loveable, totally accessible Jack Firebrace, tugging at our heartstrings as he draws us into his brittle, tragic world.
And the world, for all of them, is indeed a brittle, tragic place, brought to vivid, visceral life against Richard Kent’s minimal, powerfully evocative sets supplemented by Jason Taylor’s compelling lighting designs, Dominic Bilkey’s dynamic soundscapes and spellbinding music by Tim Van Eyken and Sophie Cotton, all of which combine to move us from peaceful war cemetery to the stark reality that put so many men into those graves: the claustrophobic tunnels below the battle zones; the harrowing horror of the front lines; the mood and mindset of men living in the perpetual build-up and aftermath of raw war.
Remaining entirely faithful to Faulks’ intention in his novel, Birdsong is not just another retelling of ‘the WW1 story’ as interpreted, years after the event, by dispassionate writers of history books or biased politicians who weren’t actually there. To the contrary, it’s about as up-close-and-personal to the cold, hard facts of the actual, lived experience as we, today, can get… a remarkable feat indeed, given that we’re experiencing it while sitting on a plush seat in a cosy auditorium in 2024.
But Birdsong isn’t a bleak, desolate, non-redemption tale either. Without stepping anywhere close to dramas that fit neatly into files marked ‘sentimental’, ‘wistful’ or ‘melodramatic’, it deftly puts themes around humanity, human endurance, friendship and both the meaning and the power of love in all its various, potent forms into the spotlight of a production that also serves to remind us of the power of theatre at its outstanding, exceptional best.