Reviews

Between the Lines/Elegy for the Great War (Norwich)

When tears or words are not enough, music can fill the void. “Between the Lines” by Simon de Deney and David Banks’ “Elegy for the Great War” are both moving commentaries on the pity of young lives wasted.

Three sections from David Banks' Elegy for the Great War arranged for violin (Keith Hobday) and cello (Phillip Trzebiatowski) precede Simon de Deney's monologue Between the Lines which Banks has directed.

Norwich Cathedral & Hostry
Norwich Cathedral & Hostry
© Fran Currie

"Pity Distilled", the first movement, has the violin melding the bugle call of "The last post" with the popular song of the early 1900s "Daisy, Daisy" – the warmth and camaraderie of music-hall contrasted with the sombre battlefield summons to the living and the dead.

For "Half Crazy" and "Dark Clouds" the cello becomes more of an equal partner as the mood sharpens and then darkens again. We are left wondering – what is the afterlife of a battlefield?

Or indeed of the whole lethal four-year conflict with its equally disruptive and horrific aftermath.

That's the main question which Between the Lines seeks to answer.
We are in one of those white-stoned cemeteries which mark the relentless havoc of the Battle of the Somme. Our guide is a former soldier, in the khaki shirt and trousers of an ordinary Tommie, who selects the grave-marker for his comrade Joe Nightingale as an exemplar.

The battlefield verse of the war poets – so many of whom, such as Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, perished – punctuates the narrative. We learn that Nightingale was only 16 when he enlisted and still a teenager when he died.

His father had enjoyed reading patriotic verse with him, the famous Kitchener poster seemed to beckon him – and it solved the problem of which of two girls he would commit to. That is, of course, until he meets Sylvie.

In 2014, cars stream past on the autoroute full of people stocking up on cheap drink. That well-tended green field symmetrically studded with vertical and uniform marble slabs hardly registers. But we in the audience know better – we're there, on the ground, listening to reality and beginning to comprehend.

After the Hostry Festival, Norwich Between the Lines plays at the Park Theatre, London until 9 November.