Review: Birdsong, Starring Ben Barnes
Published on Thursday 4th November, 10.23am, Written by Guest Contributor
It’s during the curtain call of Rachel Wagstaff’s adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’ sleeper hit novel Birdsong (now all but declared a national treasure), that the audience can appreciate the sheer level of graft required by an actor.
Most of the cast look exhausted and desolate, reluctant at first to accept the applause the audience is giving them before cracking a weary smile. As the lights go up and you adjust to the glare, it’s hard not to feel just as drained.
Originally an epic tale of love and loss. painstakingly researched from old documents, this new version, directed by Trevor Nunn, strips Faulks’ novel to the bare essentials, focusing not just on the horrors of the First World War but also on the camaraderie found in the trenches.
Let’s address the elephant in the room: the first half of the play. The story picks up with the fresh-faced and almost painfully naïve Stephen Wraysford (played by Ben Barnes, who starred in movies Prince Caspian and Dorian Gray) being sent to Amiens in France to study the factory owned by his pompous benefactor Rene Azaire (Nicholas Farrell). It is a working holiday but Stephen is soon distracted by Azaire’s beautiful wife Isabelle (Genevieve O’Reilly) with whom he begins an affair.
The purpose of this first act is never in doubt, providing crucial context; the prologue framing Wraysford’s loss of Isabelle and eventually his sense of self the longer he spends on the battlefield while the idyllic countryside is sharply contrasted against the brutality of the Somme.
Unfortunately Stephen’s introduction to Amiens can only be described as functional at best. Young Wraysford’s trysts with Isabelle scarcely crackle and Barnes constantly threatens to imbue his lust/love (delete as appropriate) with the wrong kind of theatrical melodrama. There’s a sub-plot involving a strike at Azaire’s factory that does little else but give Stephen a convenient excuse to bond with the object of his affections and it is a thread dispensed with as swiftly as the consequences of a relationship hurtling inexorably towards a doomed conclusion.
But then, in a swift and elegant transition that engulfs the audience in a pungent swirl of acrid smoke, we are transported to another world and almost another play. We are in the trenches and Wraysford is losing the battle in the face of such overwhelming death and destruction.
Any concern that this play is simply a vanity project laid at the door of a rising Brit actor keen to rekindle his theatrical credibility are quickly laid to rest – this is a believable descent into a dark midnight of the soul and Barnes carries it off with aplomb, maturing swiftly as the play progresses. It’s no star turn either – though the play patently belongs to Wraysford, his story runs parallel here with that of sapper Jack Firebrace played by Lee Ross in an astonishing performance that often threatens to steal the show. While Wraysford is left to brood over the life he has left behind (and will probably never recover, that much seems clear), Jack is left to pick up the pieces for the audience and provide a necessary emotional balance, Ross deftly showing us humanity in a place which has little time for any.
There is little mawkish sentimentality throughout the entire play, a trap that would have been all too easy to fall into. As a register of deaths rolls at the end of the second act, the sense of loss is crystallised by the grim reality, adding a genuine poignancy that reminds the audience in stark terms of the real cost of conflict.
Special mention should be made of the ingenious manner in which the play is staged, taking us from the beauty of the countryside to the dirge of embattled soil in moments, the set which contorts and transforms with each passing scene, an absolute credit to the designer, John Napier.
Although Wagstaff has been judicious with Faulks’ prose, jettisoning significant portions of the original text, the play still runs to nearly three hours. Although the first half is no dud, you’re likely to greet the intermission with varying degrees of relief. But stay the course, for Birdsong remains a powerful, affecting essay on a period of great loss for country and countryman that warrants your attention.
Review by: David Lillywhite
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