Somme epic takes us out of comfort zone

Somme epic takes us out of comfort zone

13 July 2016

IT was never going to have a happy ending, and from the opening declamations of Old Kenneth Pyper (Sean McGinley) we realise only one soldier survives the band of brothers we are yet to meet.

This is a man haunted by the ghosts of his dead Somme comrades — soldiers seamlessly breathed back to life for our consideration.

It is a poetic, unsettling opening and so dramatic you wonder where else there is to go in this challenging tribute to the thousands who died in the blood soaked fields of July 1916.

Indeed, the most moving segments of Frank McGuinness’ 1985 play were in the quieter moments and in the banter between friends and tolerated comrades.

It wasn’t the most obvious 1916 subject matter for Frank McGuinness, a nationalist from Donegal, who stepped outside his comfort zone for this one. It’s a worthy exercise, and one that should be repeated by more playwrights, though it inevitably leaves the touch of the outsider on some of the dialogue.

Written at the height of the Troubles, this attempt to engage with Ulster Protestantism urged outsiders to observe the complexities of a tradition at best foreign and at worst threatening.

The historical context of the Somme is emphasised — this is the time of Edward Carson, Home Rule, gunrunning and radical ideas — and for the Protestant and Catholic soldiers themselves, an expected payback in the new post-war Ireland.

The Somme is framed as the second Battle of the Boyne and a bloody precursor of the new Northern Ireland state. The more abstract railings against the ‘Protestant gods’ and the demands of a suffocating Protestant identity at times rang less true.

The eight soldiers we meet at the beginning of the play range from innocent country boys to sectarian shipyard workers. Along their way they suffer shell shock, lose their religion, fall into forbidden love, and question aspects of their identity that they hold most dear. Despite their contradictions and faults, their love for their homeland is allowed to ring true.

All eight actors gave stunning performances, with Donal Gallery as the ‘rare boy’, the privileged, black sheep of the family, a particularly compelling stage presence.

As they ponder ‘going over the top’, in testy scenes of new friendship, they are ultimately by each other’s sides for the most human of reasons.

A red sky in the effective staging is not a good omen. However you run with the play as a whole, it’s a devastating ending.

Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme runs at the Lyric Theatre Belfast until July 16. Performances follow in Derry, Coleraine, Armagh and Letterkenny.