ACTOR Cameron Stewart has created this one-man show with David Benson (Think No Evil of Us) as adapter and director, based on the diaries written by his grandfather, Captain Alexander Stewart, at the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele.
What will today
's sceptical, war-hating theatregoer make of Capt Stewart who, like thousands of his generation, marched off to fight for the society they believed in, not expecting to return? Stewart and Benson seem to have worried a great deal about this, burdening their raw material with a clunky framing device – Cameron Stewart appearing as himself for lengthy interludes of context and comparison.
In the sections where he presents the diaries and gets to act (which he does very well), the material becomes gripping, leaping across the generations and making us visit afresh the horrors of the trenches where men froze to death in mud and rats nibbled your Brylcreem while you slept.
In fact this text, nearly 100 years old, is a pertinent insight into war, into what soldiers do and have always done, and into that strange indefinable quality called courage. While some explanation is useful of how the diaries came to be, more theatricality and less framing would have made this a compelling piece of drama.
Until 24 August. Today 2:45pm
The full article contains 229 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
