Review - Anthem for Doomed Youth at Loft Theatre, Leamington Spa

This is the season for remembrance, when our collective memories are jogged of past wars, and the usual hopes are expressed that they won't happen again. That hope has been expressed many times, and each time has been unfulfilled.
The cast of Anthem For Doomed YouthThe cast of Anthem For Doomed Youth
The cast of Anthem For Doomed Youth

Wilfred Owen got it right when he spoke of the pity of war. Yet even to say he got it right when one was not there is to miss the point. Can one really know the pity of war?

Probably not. But who would want to know it directly if they really knew what was coming? Owen was invalided out of the trenches suffering from what was then called shell-shock, what we

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now PTSD - a less appalling name. After recovery he chose to return to the trenches. By then he was no blind patriot, but felt a kind of calling to speak the truth untold. He had to know it to the full. And as we know, he was killed in the attempt.

What he left behind is some of the finest poetry in the English language. That’s another easy phrase. Such poets don’t set out to write the finest poetry etc etc. They set out to do what they can.

History, and fashion, applies the qualification. The closest we get is some kind of sense of the feeling, an echo perhaps, louder in some than in others. Often the truth of it is in the attempt to know it as it is.

The Loft’s acknowledgement – I won’t say celebration – of the 100th anniversary of the end of the War to End All Wars, as it was called, gets close enough. Seven of the best actors perform Owen’s letters and poetry, arranged in a rough chronological order to take us through the course of the war, from hope to despair and ultimately to reconciliation.

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Some of the last lines Owen wrote acknowledged the equality between enemies, the engagement gained through loss, and the price of that understanding. Perhaps that is where the pity lies.

Wilfred Owen’s poems weren’t written to be read aloud. But in the act they acquire a power even greater than they have on the page. In performance they reminded me of some of

Shakespeare’s great speeches. They have that sense of rightness.

Anthem for Doomed Youth is simple in its construction, powerful in its delivery. It has some of the best acting I have ever seen at The Loft, and that’s saying something. It has that kind of transcendent power that only the theatre can create, and is perhaps as close as one can get to the real pity of war without actually being there.

Anthem for Doomed Youth can be seen at The Loft Theatre until Saturday October 20. Visit www.loft-theatre.co.uk for more details.