Heroes, written by French playwright Gerald Sibleyras and translated by Tom Stoppard, is clever and funny and flirts with both farce and pathos, but it isn’t great theatre. Not even this production’s superb cast could save it from being little more than a whimsical meditation on mortality.

The premise is promising: three World War I veterans – in various stages of ill health and delusion – in a French military hospital run by nuns fantasise about escaping the tyranny of the hospital terrace on which they spend their days slowly decomposing. Henri has "one-and- a-half legs", Philippe passes out every 10 minutes thanks to a piece of shrapnel in his head, and Gustave, although physically fit, is terrified of leaving the hospital grounds. [More] 

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In the original French, the title of the play, Le Vent aux Peupliers heralds the image around which it is built, namely the gentle stirring of distant poplar trees, alive, graceful survivors of the passing years. If at first this seems a strange adjunct to the daily grind of the war ‘heroes’ of the translated title, it is perhaps because we are more used to gory images of horror and notions of supreme sacrifice associated with post war stories.

With delicate irony, the old campaigners of this piece, reduced to mini skirmishes and plots, plan a final assault – a plan which will take them to the top of the distant hill, to the poplars dancing there.

What a gem of a small play this is, fresh, unsentimental and warmly humorous. The three veterans from the ‘Great War’ are the sole and jealous occupants of the rear terrace at their nursing home, watched over by an enigmatic (stone) dog. They spend their days contradicting each other and planning that last great campaign, to cross the cemetery immediately before them and climb to the boundary of their visible world. The driving quest for freedom has not left them over the decades; nor their appetite for comradeship in shared enterprises, in life itself.

Thus, the ideas underpinning the play deal lightly but significantly with mortality. How refreshing that the conversations and mini-episodes in which they are conveyed are so funny. If it is moving to see these old codgers plotting and practising, squabbling for command (and including the dog, who never contradicts and never complains, in their plans), there is also a strong element of wacky fantasy in their propositions, continual wit and irony in the dialogue and some unexpectedly physical comedy to boot.

Ross Gumbley directs with authority what is obviously a tight and well attuned team.

For Tony Geddes this set must have been a relief to design after the intricacies and demands of the recent Arsenic and Old Lace. We never stir from the terrace of the rest home, except in the constant reported vision of the three actors, looking above and beyond us to the line of poplars they have made their goal.

It is a very French scene, reflecting the changing seasons with subtle ease. The dog, alert ear cocked, is an impressive statuary beast, again an emblem of something unchanging whose silence and sameness is seen as proof of his loyalty and steadfastness.

The heroes may be reduced in worldly terms, their daily existence regulated by unseen nuns, a predictable round of non-events, but these chaps are intensely alive and interactive. Constantly reconfigured patterns of two against one keep the dialogue buoyant and the theatre is full of gentle laughter.

In a welcome return to Court, Grant Tilly plays the enthusiast of the trio, Henri. With his gammy leg and cane, face scarlet with anticipation and the earnest desire to be practical, he is, unexpectedly, the one who sees things most clearly. The performance is faultless, generously detailed and precise.

As Philippe, who suffers dizzy spells that have nothing to do with remembered combat and everything to do with the lady who wanted to be called ‘Captain’, Geoffrey Heath adds urgency to the plot. He is sure that Sister Madeleine has it in for him, that the dog can move and so on. All this is done with artful restraint. Sibleyras’ delicate balance of poignancy and  humour is in very good hands.

So to the dry cynicism of Gustave, embodied in the long frame of John Bach. As the envisaged solution to his boredom takes hold, he develops most deliciously into a ‘living crusader’, fired up by wilder and wilder schemes. His version of delusion is created with perceptive skill. 

The final image is a wonderfully telling as the trio look out at the unreachable poplars and the geese flying above them. Detail here would be a spoiler. Suffice to say it sums up the real import of the whole ‘heroic enterprise’. 

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