“Nothing’s the same anymore,” laments Billy, who’s found himself at the Somme with Maniototo friends Sam and Jack.  

The three lads have much in common, including fishing, mustering on Mt. Ida, and fondness for blackberry jam. Two of them are even in love with the same girl. But when it came to enlisting for the First World War, their motives were very different. [More] 

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While an almost three-hour play can feel a little daunting, 1917 Until the Day Dawns, a Globe Theatre production by Keith Scott, whizzes by, with the pace steady and smooth.  

It’s a story of three young men from Central Otago, called up to play their part in the mess that was ‘The Great War’, ‘The War to End All Wars’, but only the first. They join for different reasons, one because his name is drawn from the ballot, another because he can’t bear to let his friend go into danger alone and the third because he wants vengeance for those he’s lost, an outlet for his grief and incipient madness.

Billy (Ashley Stewart), Sam (Laith Bayan) and Jack (Daniel Cromar) are scrawny lads in their very early 20s. Sam is, or wants to be, a conscientious objector for reasons (not excuses) to do with his father which aren’t made entirely clear. Billy has lost several members of his extended family and is naively but dearly in love with Jack’s sister Maggie, who doesn’t reciprocate his feelings but doesn’t have the heart or the strength to send him off to war with a broken heart.

The friendship and shared history between these three is well drawn and the three actors play very distinctive personalities.  There are small elements of their characters that don’t ring quite true; for example, Billy speaks with a ‘cultured’ accent yet elides the ends of his words (nothin’, anythin’). These are very small details that will no doubt iron themselves out over the run. 

The other characters move around and alongside these three boys. Bessie, Sam’s mother (Denise Casey), Maggie, Jack’s sister and the love of Billy’s heart (Maisie Thursfield) and Marie Chabot (Lynne Keen), the owner of the French café where the boys (I can’t call them men) spend their leave eating “óeuf et frites” and drinking “stagger juice” present the perspective of the women of war. Maisie’s Maggie is perhaps the most heart-breaking, unable to shatter Billy’s dreams of returning to his love, but equally unable to return his feelings. My own heart always breaks watching the portrayal of mothers losing their children to stupid war and Bessie is a calm and courageous mother. Lynne’s ‘Mad Marie’ is funny and sympathetic.

Sergeant David Macgregor (Brook Bray), a giant of a man physically, plays a large but somehow under-developed part in this story. His own story of time already spent at the front, where he experienced the return of the first wave of soldiers from the Somme and apparently ran away, I think is integral to the understanding of what is happening to the other characters. I wonder if his experience and his story could be developed further. He is an unlikeable character but his story presents such tragedy. Although that wouldn’t have been understood or offered at the time, it would deepen the pathos of the main characters.

The slightly startling juxtaposition of a bard dressed in black jeans and shirt, strumming a guitar and singing gently and melodically, at first seems like it might be weird and out of context.  Bill Morris offers a really lovely, peaceful counterpoint to the steady pace of the play and I decide that his occasional appearance on stage, in the midst of moments of high emotion, in fact lifts the whole performance.

I look forward to the Globe Theatre getting very good audiences for this play. 

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