The contribution of those from African countries to the Allied Forces during the Second World War has long been underrated and undervalued.
Andrew Ashaye’s subtly strong Our War is valuable in recognising the 90,000 soldiers who came from West Africa to serve under British officers (black soldiers, no matter their standing or ability, were not permitted to hold officer ranks), many thousands of whom lost their lives fighting for the ‘motherland’.
But the service of Commonwealth soldiers is only part of a bigger picture of sacrifice, and in Ashaye’s earlier play, now reworked for a cast of two, the action is split between Christian, a young Nigerian man who finds himself fighting the Japanese in Burma (today, Myanmar), and his cousin Ola, a trainee nurse who answers the call and comes to London at the height of the war.
It is a moving and thoughtful piece of writing based on real people and incorporating actual events, most movingly for the South East London audience at The Jack Studio, the V2 rocket attack a short distance away on New Cross Road, which caused one of the War’s biggest single losses of civilian life in Britain.
Christian and Ola’s stories emerge from the letters they exchange over many months, the back and forth of letters and paralleling events becoming lightly worn features in a production that focusses on the individual experiences of the cousins.
Lola Oteh-Cole as Ola offers a resilient woman clear about her purpose to do the right thing and conflicted by a vocation to save lives in circumstances where difficult choices have to be made. Ola Teniola’s Christian is a young man uncertain about the war and his role in it driven by a reluctance to be swept along on a wave of patriotism that isn't his own.
Kate Bannister’s sensitive production is enhanced by the well-judged soundscape created by Florence Hand, which helps bring the two stories to life. The eerie jungle sounds contrast with air raid sirens, highlighting the vastly different daily fears endured in the same war by two people both so far from their home and from each other.
In elevating the personal events so vividly, Our War applies a macro lens through which to reckon an epic event. The result has an unescapable universality.