The theatre foyer was crammed to bursting with excited chattering schoolchildren, mostly between the ages of seven and fourteen, which was roughly the ages of the 3,000,000 children evacuated from danger zones during World War Two in order to avoid the bombing. Many of the evacuees had a very hard time with unfeeling and sometimes actually cruel foster parents, but the two boys who are telling their story in this play had such fun and such an exciting adventure Im sure that many of the young audience could have wished to join them.
Morpurgo, though, doesnt miss out the unpleasant parts and things didnt look too promising at the beginning. There was the trauma of leaving home and family (with only a suitcase and the essential gas mask) to be labelled like a piece of luggage before cramming into a small railway carriage and traveling for many hours to a safe place in the country, especially uncomfortable with a teacher who smoked incessantly all the way. Arriving at their destination, weary, tearful and disheveled, they were lined up on the stage at a school hall to be looked over and chosen one by one. Youre making it sound like market day complains the farmer who arrives late to collect one girl and instead finds two dejected boys wondering why they hadnt been chosen.
Mathew Hamper and Paul Sandys, playing our two heroes Tucky and David, didnt put a foot (or anything else either) wrong throughout the whole play; their expressions, mannerisms and attitudes were absolutely, exactly those of the eleven year old boys they were representing, and the rest of the five-strong cast were equably credible, true to type, and very versatile, taking on several roles each. Chris Porter managed four.
Janet Greaves changed from the stressed but conscientious headmistress, escorting vast numbers of children to (hopeful) safety, to the motherly kindly farmers wife where the boys were finally billeted, and Michael Palmer is a perfectly judged taciturn farmer, saying little but noticing everything and eventually proud and pleased with his charges.
Keith Bakers two-way raked set, with the re-positioning of a few props and a steering wheel, becomes a railway station, train, bus, school hall, farm house, and moorland, before returning to its opening bomb-site, and the whole production is a perfectly balanced masterpiece of storytelling and emotion with a thrilling adventure thrown in for good measure.
Friendship, trust and loyalty are paramount in an era when all were questioned, and the boys find themselves discussing the rights and wrongs of a situation which finds them having to chose between betraying or helping a perceived enemy who has just saved your life, even if he is a hated German. I am wearing the uniform of your enemy, says the airman, but we are friends.
Buckroyd keeps the pace of the production at a steady rate of always something new happening, and the children (young and old) were absorbed, attentive and engrossed throughout (and silent). Maybe it could have given them the idea that there is more to life than the latest smart phone.
Touring to Buxton, Worthing, Basingstoke, Abergavenny, Dudley, Winchester, Bracknell, Portsmouth, Harpenden, Doncaster, Blackpool, Peterborough, Colchester, Hatfield, Hornchurch, Eastbourne and Exeter
This production was reviewed at Watford by Howard Loxton and at Newbury by Robin Strapp