Surfing Tommies

Synopsis

Set in the First World War, this poignant drama follows the lives of three Cornish soldiers on an incredible journey from their homes to the fields of Flanders, and back home again. Along the way they meet mazed beauties, mad male voice choirs and the first surfers, using coffin lids for surfboards!

Our Review:

17 June 2011

Having been one of the lucky few awarded a slice of the Arts Council pie, BishBashBosh are putting it to admirable use, bringing to life a piece of peculiarly Cornish – yet entirely British – history.

Surfing Tommies, a both comedic and poignant snapshot of WWI, packs in the usual motifs of a war tale: camaraderie, futility, love, home and abroad, life and death. Cutting between an abandoned mine in present day Perranporth, its heyday of 1914 and the front line trenches, the play rolls along apace, its gobbets of humorous scenes acted with glee by the small and accomplished cast. Though the story is nothing new - a small mining community altered forever by war – it is tenderly told here, filled with lush Cornwall dialect and deliciously accented.

Toby Nicholas, Trevor Cuthbertson and Dean Nolan are excellent as the three miners-come-soldiers who swap mining the tin of Cornwall for exploding the clay of Flanders. [Dean Nola...

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Latest User Review

S Singer - 17 June 2011:

A stunning play worth making an effort to seek out and see. The use of Anglo-Cornish adds a sustained richness throughout while the use of Cornish language adds a deeper dimension and poignancy on the nature of greed, war, territory and loss. ...

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