The main theme of Ciaran Cookson’s Mud Rats is the youth and, if not innocence, naïveté of the soldiers involved in World War I, specifically at the Battle of the Somme. This is apparent as the audience enters to see the cast, in character, engaging in boisterous horseplay. It neatly establishes the composition of the friends, with two behaving childishly and the other pair maturely tolerating their antics.
Richard (Joseph Heaps), Thomas (Cormac Murphy), George (Curtis McCarthy) and Harry (Charlie Sloboda-Bolton) are members of a ‘pals’ regiment, having known each other from school or their factory workplace in Salford. But as life in the trenches progresses from boredom to the terror of going over the top and facing enemy soldiers, the bonds between the friends come under strain.
Great emphasis is placed upon authenticity, with Jay McMahon credited as military advisor. The characters are suspiciously well-informed, knowing not only the type of standard rifle they will be issued in the army (the SMLE, since you asked) but also capable of debating the extent to which military equipment has advanced since the Boer War. "You are always full of interesting details," remarks a character in understatement.
Even before the characters leave the UK for the trenches, they engage in heavyweight discussions on their motivation for joining up (being presented with a white feather in one case) and whether they will be capable of killing an enemy soldier. While the detail is interesting—soldiers had to know how to sew to repair their uniforms—it makes for a leisurely opening. The rites of passage aspect of the play—the boys maturing into men—gets buried under the sheer amount of detail.
Writer-director Ciaran Cookson works on the principle when in doubt, any idea should be included. This is not to say the ideas are bad—the play concludes on a sombre note with the audience involved in a communal act of remembrance. The battle scenes are staged in mime with, in the concluding fight, a poem spoken over the wordless action.
But there are so many ideas squeezed into the play, it becomes irregular and lacks a consistent tone. The cast arbitrarily break the fourth wall and lead the audience in a singalong to a ribald period song. Unlike, say, Oh! What a Lovely War, the songs are not used for a satirical purpose. For some reason, when the sergeant (Joel Dyer) ticks off a solider, he does so in rhyme. A character killed in act one pops up in the second act like Banquo's ghost.
The structure of the play is uneven, with an over-long first act and a very short second. One had assumed this was intended to allow the second act a more oppressive tone, moving towards tragedy, but it still includes a burst of song.
The play certainly provides a showcase for the talents of a committed cast who are required to monologue, mime, sing, dance and pretty much push themselves to the limit. Set designer Beth Harvey achieves wonders, setting the scene with just basic wooden packing crates.
It is better to have too many ideas than too few, but the sprawling nature of Mud Rats reduces its dramatic impact. A more focussed approach might have resulted in a more powerful play.