Regeneration at King's Theatre

Set in Edinburgh and commemorating the centenary of the First World War, Pat Barker’s Regeneration tells the story of Siegfried Sassoon.

In July 1917, in an open letter to the Times, Sassoon made a passionate denunciation of both the war's aims and the strategy of the generals. The army, reluctant to court marshall Sassoon, decided instead to commit him to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where he was incarcerated until he was ‘cured.’

At Craiglockhart, Sassoon meets and befriends another patient, fellow poet, Wilfred Owen, and is 'treated' by Dr W H Rivers, a pioneering psychiatrist in the treatment of what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder.

Challenging definitions of sanity itself, the play dramatically explores the effects of war and of man's battle to honour both his conscience and duty to his fellow man.