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| Pic: Catherine Ashmore |
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old...
I, like many others, first came across the war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon during English literature lessons at secondary school, so it is something most people are familiar with, if not necessarily proficient in.
I remember having to pick apart each line of Owen's devastating Dulce et Decorum est and analysing it almost word for word, then writing an essay about its expert construction and the deeper meaning of its rhythms. And while I enjoyed doing this, it did put me off poetry for the rest of my life.
I've never believed that art can be analysed, or ever should be. I prefer to take from a painting, poem or novel what I read into it, based upon my personal life experience: dismantling Owen's war poems seems to me, in hindsight, rather crass.
And so it was refreshing to reacquaint myself with the lyrical beauty of these poems in the late Stephen MacDonald's Not About Heroes, which despite what Sassoon may have believed, very much is about heroes.
The play is a two-hander and tells the story of Owen and Sassoon based upon the time they knew one another, from their first meeting at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh in 1916 through to the dreadful news Sassoon receives from Northern France just seven heartbreaking days before the Armistice.
Owain Gwynn plays Wilfred Owen, a gentle soul with a delightful Welsh lilt who is sent to Craiglockhart to recover from neurasthenia, otherwise known as shell shock. He is visibly damaged by the horrors of what he has experienced while serving with the Manchester Regiment - he stutters and trips over his words, his manner is timid and unassuming.
Gwynn portrays the damaged Owen with such sensitivity and grace, and he really does look the part, even sporting a centre parting as Owen did in real life.
Owen's desire to experience something akin to Sassoon's physical terror and abject bravery on the Western Front is heartbreaking. He believes it will improve his understanding, and so his poetry, in an effort to get his work published. Knowing what happened to Owen in the end makes this all the more moving.
There was obviously a great friendship between these two men, based upon common experience and their general outlook on life, but also, history can suspect, through an attraction that dared not speak its name. This is not dwelt upon in the play, and quite rightly too, but it is present in the performances, the lingering looks and the physical contact that lasts just that little bit longer than is necessary.
This depiction of what by modern standards might be an unrequited attraction (at the very least an intellectual one) is beautifully portrayed.
As a result, Daniel Llewelyn-Williams as Sassoon is a ball of suppression. He manages to portray the elder poet's mental and emotional states through physical performance expertly. He uses expressions to speak more than words ever could - we see trauma, heartache, horror, ferocious anger and daunting intellect. Sassoon was evidently not an easy man to get to know, but the gentle Owen melts his initially harsh defence through the connection of shared experience and the love of, and talent with, poetry.
It is heartening to see the established Sassoon, seven years Owen's senior, coaching and supporting the fledgling wordsmith, fully believing his student can fulfill his true potential and outshine the poetic achievements of both himself and colleague Robert Graves.
The audience knows that Wilfred Owen and his poems go on to become fundaments of British literary culture, to be revered for generations, to be studied in schools for decades to come, and to never lose the gut-wrenching power they were given on the very day they were written on the battlefields of Northern France.
Siegfried Sassoon thankfully enjoyed a long life, dying aged 80 in 1967 - almost half a century after the tragic death, aged just 25, of his friend, his protege, his soul brother - the greatest war poet there ever was.
The tragedy of what these men endured, what they relived over and over each night in their waking hours and bedevilled nightmares, is brought to life on the stark, imaginative set which mixes trenches with hospital beds. Not About Heroes is an intensely powerful piece of drama, most of all for those who know the stories of their own family members who fought and perhaps died in the Great War.
Like the works of Owen and Sassoon, this play should also be on the curriculum of schools the length and breadth of this sceptred isle. Lest we forget.
The stats
Writer: Stephen MacDonald
Director: Tim Baker
Cast: Owain Gwynn (Wilfred Owen); Daniel Llewelyn-Williams (Siegfried Sassoon)
Performed at Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Mold, November 6 to 29, 2014. Performance reviewed: November 11, 2014
Links
Not About Heroes on the Clwyd Theatr Cymru website (retrieved Jan 10, 2015)
Stephen MacDonald on Wikipedia (retrieved Jan 10, 2015)
Siegfried Sassoon at The Poetry Archive (retrieved Jan 10, 2015)
Wilfred Owen at The Poetry Archive (retrieved Jan 10, 2015)
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