Review: Private Peaceful at Harrogate Theatre

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Lauren Crisp is a book editor, writer and keen follower of arts and culture. She reviews theatre and cultural events in and around the district in her spare time.

You can contact Lauren on laurencrispwriter@gmail.com. 

A stark, minimal stage opens to a young soldier checking his pocket watch. Tommo Peaceful is counting down the seconds ‘til dawn, and to his fate.  

Directed and adapted by Simon Reade from much-loved author Michael Morpurgo’s 2003 novel, Private Peaceful is a one-man show.

At almost 90 minutes and with no interval, the adaptation, replete with dialogue and multi-roling, is a huge undertaking for even the most experienced actor, but for Benjamin Cain, fresh out of stage school, this is a professional debut.

As Tommo waits for morning to come, he recalls a country childhood, and all that led him to where he now finds himself: in the trenches of the Great War, surrounded by death.

Cain does a fine job of the rapid-fire character rotations this adaptation demands. He is at once his father, his brother, his mother and his first love; he narrates a pompous colonel on the enlistment campaign trail, as well as a savage sergeant who makes his life miserable.

Proving himself a chameleon at the kaleidoscope of character changes he embodies, Cain reels off line after line and weaves a compelling tale, with just a camp bed, a soldier’s uniform and a projected rural backdrop as adornment. 

Lighting and sound are minimal, but they gently support narrative progression, as gunfire replaces birdsong, and as darkness and occasional blinding flashes of light transport us to the apocalyptic battlefield.  

The bright-eyed Cain captures Tommo’s childhood joy with a stirring lightness and whimsy. He gambols across the stage, delighting in childhood frolics, bringing rural Devonshire to life.

As we move into the play’s darker corners, though, the production begins to waver; perhaps owing to its format, there is little time for Cain to breathe between lines. Some characters blend into one and the relentless pace leaves little time to reflect on the sheer, desperate horror of it all, to allow it to truly sink in.

There is a terrible weight and a pathos that spills from literature and art born of the Great War. This production, sadly, floats just out of grasp of that feeling. Professional and technically sound though it is, I wanted everything to slow down – to allow the audience to really feel.

Had Cain been allowed that space, he could have shone even brighter than he already did. As it was, he exited to rapturous applause, a young man with an undoubtedly dazzling career ahead of him.

Private Peaceful is at Harrogate Theatre until Saturday, 26 October.