THEATRE SAYS THE MOST RELEVANT THINGS by Rob Pretorius

Recently I have been to see two theatre performances at the Oxford Playhouse. Both, in my opinion are fantastic vehicles to discuss the young persons’ perceived role within society; a role either in the armed forces or as a civilian; something we all have an opinion on. As our generation begins to play bigger parts in the day to day performance which is society (and if I can extend the metaphor here) I feel we are at risk of become increasingly lost within the complexities of plot we don’t know and don’t want to take part in.

The plays; Deep Cut by Phillip Ralph and Days of Significance by Roy Williams both illustrated this perfectly. The former, a semi-documentary verbatim, based on events surrounding the mysterious deaths of four soldiers at the Deep Cut army barracks in Surrey between 1995 and 2002 is a thought- provoking response to the injustice surrounding the succeeding inquiries. Essentially, the playwright asks us the uncomfortable question: how can the government so blatantly shun accountability and responsibly for the well-being of new recruits? The implied answer that is given: British armed forces are misused and mistreated because they are not individuals, but merely products of reification. What is most shocking about the play is that the government increasingly distances themselves from the people they affect and those who should remain accountable for their actions rarely do.

More subtly, Days of Significance said similar things, although topically it focussed on the Iraq war. Undoubtedly, one expected a didactic commentary on the tragic misuse of soldiers in Iraq and consequently a great and overwhelming question. However, Williams surprised me in that he didn’t explicitly focus on the injustices of the conflict in Iraq, but rather provide a continuous meditation (spiced up by language) on the brutal and timeless consequences on war.

An impressive example was the way in which the staging was used to carry the themes of the play above and beyond what the characters were saying, often screaming, to each other. The three different levels of the stage set, shared between two locations (the High Street of an English market town and the streets of Basra), were connected literally and metaphorically by the gigantic billboard sign, on it written Coca Cola. No matter how far these soldiers go to fight, they will never escape the culture of commerciality. Ultimately what connects these two places (the UK and Iraq) and what is a common feature within the lives of the soldiers at home and abroad is the commercial aspect. Undoubtedly Roy Williams uses commerciality as a metaphor to relate the soldiers’ (unfortunately in this case naive young people) to products with predetermined roles within a system which they don’t even understand. The impact of this simple stage feature implies a tragic subtext; the lives of the handful of young English ‘guys’ who are essentially victims of their own ignorance and cultural deprivation are at the mercy of somebody else’s agenda for war.

If nothing more, these have been performances worth seeing; over the last few years both Deep Cut and Days of Significance received critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival. However, as well as urging all you people to go and see good theatre where you live, I want to promote our role to not turn a blind eye. The extent to which we challenge boundaries that distance us from what’s really going on behind the scenes is crucial. As the plays show us, going to war for the wrong reasons is a consequence of ignorance. A question I leave you with is: How can one go and fight for something when you don’t know all the facts?