Review: BIRDSONG, Richmond Theatre

In the 90s, when people still read books on the Tube, Sebastian Faulks’ First World War novel, Birdsong, was the one to be seen with. Weighty in both senses, it was a critical and commercial success and, in 2010, it was adapted for the West End by Rachel Wagstaff. Tweaked a bit, the old err… warhorse is now on tour. And it won’t be all over by Christmas.

Sprawling over three hours (though with two intervals, theatre’s equivalent of large print books), we follow Stephen Wraysford first to pre-war France, then into the trenches of Picardy, before his final reckoning with his lost love. 

James Esler (Wraysford), on his professional stage debut, is at his best in the first act, falling in love with the neglected wife of a French industrialist. Charlie Russell goes sad then sexy as Isabelle, the two bonding over their political idealism and need to be loved. 

It’s all a little soapy, but that’s preferable to the air of pantomime introduced by Sargon Yelda as Isabelle’s abusive husband and Roger Ringrose playing a freeloading town councillor. Both deliver caricatures rather than characters, undermining the tragedy of the trap in which the lovers find themselves. Maybe director, Alastair Whatley, might have considered the old cliche that ‘less is more’.

Some years later, Esler is stiff-backed in uniform, a lieutenant with a reputation for coldness among the men he commands in the field. Damaged by Isabelle unexpectedly walking out on him, he prefers to spend time reading the entrails of dead rats rather than find comfort in the fellowship of his comrades, but that changes a little in the tunnels under the German lines when he is exposed to the suffering of others.

Amongst the pals who enlisted, there’s a range of regional accents, a jester or two, a shagger and a pair who are just getting by as best they can. Max Bowden is full of chirpy charm as the sapper too afraid to read his letters from home, but the men in the mud on the Somme are types more than individuals and, though we hear the songs and jokes that get them through the terrible days and nights, they never break out of the confines of the script’s unwillingness to surprise its audience. 

Perhaps the material is just too familiar after All Quiet On The Western Front, 1917 and, especially, Blackadder Goes Forth, which set a bar for presenting the pathos of life waiting to go over the top that might never be matched. It’s all done with a fine attention to detail (the uniforms are magnificent) and committed performances (Natalie Radmall-Quirke is in show-stealing form as Isabelle’s sister, Jeanne) but there’s little to shock the audience out of its comfort zone, inured as we are to war’s carnage. With so much plot to cram in, we hardly have time to shed a tear.

Having not read the book, but being aware of its reputation, I knew it was a romance set against the horrors of The Somme - that the stage version was no less, but no more than that, proved disappointing.     

Birdsong is on tour until February 2025

Photo images: Pamela Raith

     

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.