Review: IT IS EASY TO BE DEAD, Trafalgar Studios

It is a paradox for sure, but it is much easier to deal with millions of faceless dead, whose flesh was chewed up in the charnel houses of the First World War's battlefields, their names etched into the Menin Gate at Ypres, than to process an individual, cut down in hails of bullets. Give life back to those scrolling names, one at a time, and the horror, the loss and the waste gain a scale that can be considered through thought - and so the tears can flow.

That scaling is at the heart of It Is Easy To Be Dead, Neil McPherson's critically acclaimed play transferrring from the Finborough Theatre to the Trafalgar Studios' intimate space. We meet Charles Hamilton Sorley first as a schoolboy runner, out in the rain, bursting with energy and lust for life, the muscular Christianity of his Protestant upbringing and upper middle class Scots roots beaming out of his every pore. But we know his fate - his parents' reaction to his death and its aftermath running parallel to his own on the tiny stage.

Charles is an outstanding schoolboy at Marlborough, his writing suffused with passion and skills whether in his poetry or his letters, a talent whose potential was already being realised. His own man in every sense, on a six month stay in Germany, he sees the wonders of its culture - and sees too its dangerous obsessions and incipient antisemitism. He dreams of a new culture that marries the best of the English and the German, but, when conflict becomes inevitable, joins up to fight for King and Motherland and not Koenig und Vaterland. (He also enjoys the sweetest of chaste affairs with his landlady, a beautifully written interlude in McPherson's perfectly judged script).

Though we know what's coming, it's still shattering to see the faces - frozen forever at 19, 20, 21 years of age - of Sorley's friends, the privileged officer class whose attrition amidst the shells, bullets and gas on the Western Front was even greater than that of Tommy and his pals in the trenches. That my elder son is the same age as them (and has so often adopted that same look of apprehension masked by bravado at the coming of adult responsibilities) drives a personal dagger into a heart that has always bled readily for the poor buggers in their muddy hell.

The cast are tremendous, totally committed to their roles. Elizabeth Rossiter plays the piano and doubles as the wordless German Frau whose life is shaken up by the charisma of her teenage lodger. Hugh Benson, his operatic voice alternately strident and doleful, as poems are put to music and old favourites sung, adds a layer of poignancy to a play hradly short in the first place. Tom Marshall and Jenny Lee make wholly believable parents: he the epitome of the Calvanist tradition, stiff upper lip maintained - until he cracks; she the grieving mother, emotions just about held in check, but unable to cope with the void in her life.

But this is Alexander Knox's play. His Charlie is the son every parent wants, the brother every sister wants, the friend every young man wants and, had he got to Oxford, the boyfriend every undergraduate wants. His poetry was underpinned by technical skill, but animated by a sense of right and wrong that he decided according to a moral compass uncontaminated by the false gods of patriotism, religious bigotry and class distinction. Maybe that idealism would have faded, but Knox's eyes burn with its power, its brutal extinguishing a gut-wrenching blow over a century on.

This production connects deeply with its audience and, if it does not break any new ground (though the impetus it gives to those minded to explore Sorely's work is welcome) that doesn't matter. It is one man's story and yet it is also the story of millions of men and a sharp reminder of the fragility of peace and the terrible consequences of taking that state for granted.

Don't forget your tissues.

It Is Easy To Be Dead continues at the Trafalgar Studios until 3 December.

Read Neil McPherson's guest blog.

Photo Scott Rylander.

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