This year marks the 100th anniversary of the ill-fated ANZAC landing at Gallipoli – in case you missed this important piece of information. Personally, I’m totally over the heart-string tugging, the glorification of military heroism and the hypocrisy surrounding ‘the war to end all wars’.

Hypocrisy, I hear you cry? Well, at the end of a week when we sent a new troop of soldiers to fight in Iraq, the PM stands on the shores of Gallipoli and talks about how New Zealand believes in peace in our time. Not on my watch it doesn’t, no more than it did during my eight years of military service when many of my best mates were scrapping in the jungles of Vietnam against men who now lead a nation that is one of our most valued trading partners. Maybe the Prime Minister missed that meeting. He certainly missed the irony of what he was saying but most of the rest of us didn’t. 

It would seem I’m still volunteering for such quasi-military missions, the latest being to attend the opening performance of Crossfade Productions excellent Not About Heroes – an account of the relationship between two of the greatest poets of the early 20th century: Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, while they were at Craiglockhart Military Hospital, a psychiatric infirmary for the treatment of shell-shocked British officers shipped home from the horrors of the trenches at the Somme. Lucky for them in a way. If they’d been enlisted men they would have simply been shot as deserters, Owen at least.

It’s a simple concept, this rather profound work. Yet-to-be-famous man meets already-famous-man who he unashamedly hero worships. Yet-to-be-famous man, Wilfred Owen – played with incredible accuracy by Andrew Gordon; they’re look-alikes – has been sent home in disgrace and labelled a coward by his commanding officer. Already-famous-man, Siegfried Sassoon – played with subtlety and great finesse by Matthew Diesch – having caused considerable discord among his fellow officers with his 1917 ‘Soldier’s Declaration’ in which he challenged the xenophobic jingoism of the war machine, is sent home to shut him up. By some stroke of fate, or bureaucratic misadventure, they both end up at Craiglockhart at the same time. 

Ironically, along the way to becoming a serious thorn in the trembling military side, Sassoon picked himself up a Military Cross, his citation reading “For conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches. He remained for 1½ hours under rifle and bomb fire collecting and bringing in our wounded. Owing to his courage and determination all the killed and wounded were brought in.” Sent home, he was, for being too much of a hero. 

Both poets are clearly homosexual and it must be remembered that, at that time in our queer history, ‘buggery’ as it was called was not only illegal but severely punished, at least amongst men. This was, after all, only 20 years after Oscar Wilde was tried for gross indecency over a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and sentenced to two years in prison with hard labour. While some sectors of British society were tolerant of same-sex relationships – the navy, the arts, prisons, upper class women – the army was not, so over this aspect of their relationship we must clearly draw a veil.  

It’s there, it’s obvious, but no sex please, we’re British. Given the above, there’s plenty of opportunity for either character in this powerful two-hander to be played as limp-wristed wimp or gung-ho hero but these two fine actors, and their equally adroit director Terry Hooper, avoid all of these pitfalls and produce intricate, balanced performances that illuminate both the courage and the humanity of these two exceptional men. 

The Uxbridge Centre is a welcoming space but you’d be wise to dress warmly if the 90 minute opening night journey is anything to go by. It gets a tad cool by the end of the night.

At the back of the stage area is a wide, cream cyclorama/gauze and in front of it, to the right, is Sassoon’s writing desk, his coat stand, his cloth cap and his golf clubs. Unlike Owen, who spends the entire performance dressed in full military kit, Sam Brown belt, swagger stick and all, Sassoon has a few simple, but telling, costume changes: a sports coat, a smoking jacket and golfing attire. These contribute to a rich authenticity that permeates the production. Everything reeks of public schools, fags and Raj privilege and it’s absolutely right that they should, because this was the world of the officer class in General Douglas Haig’s ‘Gentleman’s Army’.

Downstage left is a drinks table and directly upstage from that is Owen’s desk and his somewhat lonely coat stand with its solitary tin hat. It’s a Spartan setting but that’s OK because this is a play about performance and words and there’s plenty to admire in both those domains without getting too busy with trifles.

The evening opens with a bit of stilted dialogue as Owen prepares to leave the hospital to return to the front. It’s the only time we see either man with his emotional guard down and it works splendidly. They embrace, but it’s awkward, angular, uncomfortable. It’s a rather old hat writers tool this ‘lets’ take a hunk from later in the play and open with it’ routine, but it works well enough and it gets us underway.  

From here on in, it’s all first-rate stuff. It’s funny in that quirky, self-effacing way that is so quintessentially British, so terribly Trevor Howard with a pinch of Leslie Phillips. It’s serious too, of course. At its heart it’s more about writers and their relationship with their craft, with words, nuances, rhythm and pace than it is about war and heroism. The writer, Stephen MacDonald knew about that stuff because, as well as being an actor, producer and director, he was also a writer of distinction whose theatre works, while seldom produced today, were minor hits in their own time.

We learn a lot about Owen, less about Sassoon, as the role of storyteller swings from the younger man (Owen) to the older. We get to hear about Sassoon’s ‘The Old Huntsman’ and Owen’s first publication in the hospital journal ‘The Hydra’. Not much, mind you, just enough to encourage obsessive researchers like myself to go hunting in dusty places for old texts to see just what MacDonald’s fuss is about. This isn’t, after all, a presentation of either man’s poetic works, but more the story of a meeting, a relationship, and what happens when the pleasure of such a rich vein of happiness is cut short by the violent death in war of one of the participants. Owen’s death is handled with subtlety and the resulting emotional death of Sassoon is splendidly handled by Diesch.

I have to say, having walked the talk, that these two actors have created credible military men and have done so without the pomp and circumstance often resorted to by lesser mortals. They carry themselves like men of war and have that occasional weariness that accompanies deep and abiding emotional pain.

There are the inevitable professional questions and the occasionally caustic response. When challenged by Owen’s about a piece he’d written, Sassoon replies simply, “I meant it when I wrote it” and we all nod in understanding.

There are few full length readings during the evening but the one chosen is truly profound and speaks for the play. It’s Sassoon’s ‘They’ and it goes like this:

The Bishop tells us: ‘When the boys come back 
‘They will not be the same; for they’ll have fought
‘In a just cause: they lead the last attack
‘On Anti-Christ; their comrades’ blood has bought
‘New right to breed an honourable race,
‘They have challenged Death and dared him face to face’

‘We’re none of us the same!’ the boys reply.
‘For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind;
‘Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die;
‘And Bert’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find
‘A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change.’
And the Bishop said: ‘The ways of God are strange!’ 

There are some terrific monologues from both actors and beautiful moments of late afternoon reflection. There’s delight when Owen finds a love poem Sassoon has written and we flush almost as much as he does when he’s found out. And there’s the necessary artistic name-dropping. There’s Robert Graves – “He’s very English in these matters” – HG Wells and Rupert Brooke, the latter, dead from an infected mosquito bite on his way to Gallipoli and introduced as if to herald Owen’s own fate, and which has Owen musing. “I’ve got to go back and face it.” Especially poignant is the moment Sassoon hands the poetic mantle to Owen with “You’ve reached Parnassus”, a rare compliment which the younger man fails to hear. 

Not About Heroes is a rich and satisfying work with some truly great lines: “All they can see are medals and scars”, “I’m shortening the war, making a separate peace for myself” and “There were, by now, no secrets between us”. They’re meaningful, and take us deep into the world of the poet who just also happens to be in the front line of one of the truly great horror stories in world history

At the end there is no sentiment, no maudlin mawkishness, just a story, simply told, of two boys who went to war. At the end, as so many of my days ended for so many years: The Last Post.  If I never hear that tune again it will still be too soon. 

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