The Return of the Soldier (Jermyn Street Theatre)

Rebecca West‘s powerful 1918 story, about a shell-shocked amnesiac officer returning home and rekindling an old love which pre-dates his wife, makes an interesting and quite strong five-handed chamber musical. And it’s a real delight to hear it evocatively acted and generally well sung in the sympathetic, intimate confines of the resonant Jermyn Street theatre where there is no need for mics.

Charles Miller’s music is impressive at the time although there isn’t a great deal which is memorable except for a single recurrent motif and an engaging – if macabre – ragtime number sung to fine effect by Michael Matus in the second half. The score also includes a couple of beautifully counterpointed quartets which really convey the feelings and worries of each individual singer.

Matus’s acting is outstanding both as the salt-of-the-earth, vulnerable husband who isn’t well enough to fight and as the debonair but intelligently pragmatic doctor diving into early Freudian thinking. Laura Pitt-Pulford gets exactly the right anguished resignation for Margaret and achieves a terrific contrast in the carefree scenes with Christopher Baldry (Stewart Clarke) who loves her and has forgotten almost everything else.

Zoe Rainey as Mrs Kitty Baldry, described by her husband as having ‘a smile like a sliver plate on a coffin lid’ is by turns passionate, angry, self righteous. It’s a fine performance of brittle passion. And Charlie Langham is pleasing as Baldry’s anxious young cousin who knows all the background and can see every point of view.

Simon Anthony Wells has done well with the deigns too, using one side of the stage as the heart of Margaret’s relatively humble kitchen (fabulous old cooker) and the other more or less representing the Baldrys’ wealthy house and garden.

So there’s a great deal here to admire although some of the lyrics (Tim Sanders) are creakily banal and very repetitive. "With arms to hold and lips to kiss all we wanted was this" is less then riveting and we really don’t need weary clichéd refrains such as "in my little way" and "to the manner born."