theatre


ANOTHER COUNTRY Julian Mitchel Te Trafalgar Studio Until 21 June


On the day I went to see this fine revival I had been reading Anthony Seldon and David Walsh’s fine new book Public Schools and the Great War. Tis new and important study explains just how our Public Schools were dominated by the Great War and indeed continue to be so.


boys singing the first verse of ‘I vow to thee my Country’. Whilst this hymn isn’t very popular, I thought it a powerful way to begin as it reminds us yet more of the ethos of such schools and indeed the feel of national surety in the 1930s. I am pleased to say that even during the interval my companions did not try to dissuade me of my love for this hymn, although I susect they were more sceptical than I. Te play centres on two boys, each in


their own way conforming to the system and fighting against it. Tommy Judd, played by


the brilliant Will


Atenborough, is an ardent school boy Marxist, whilst Guy Bennet, portrayed


he flirts with the pretiest of the boys rather made the skin crawl. Tis is a funny and wity play about


the way people interact and relate to each other and captures wonderfully how teenage boys do so in public schools. It is also poignantly moving: Judd leaning over to tuck in a junior boy who is scared is touching and reminds us that even in great adversity kindness shines through.


Bede Wear books


ST CUTHBERT’S CORPSE A Life after Death


David Willem Sacristy Press, 112pp, pbk 978 1908381156, £8.99


BUILDING ST CUTHBERT’S


SHRINE Durham Cathedral and the Life of Prior Turgot Lionel Green, edited by Peter Hopkins Sacristy Press, 164pp, pbk 978 1908381125, £12.99


Up and down the country our Public Schools have Combined Cadet Forces which parade on Remembrance Sunday or on Armistice Day. Indeed many boys and girls will worship each and every day in Chapels built as war memorials or at the very least containing memorials of fallen old members. In a way this understanding of the


Public School system is important in coming to see Another Country, set 12 years aſter the end of the First World War in the summer term of 1930 and yet still dominated by it. Te visit of a conscientious objector to the school and the obsession with Te Corps and indeed the Empire are all treated as major things by the boys. In the play we never meet any of the masters – they are figures of fun and at times fear, but it is quite clear the school is run by the boys and the Twenty Two, a self-propagating group of senior boys. Te play opens powerfully with the


energetically and at times whimsically by Rob Callender, is dealing with the fact he is homosexual and his affections for other men are not the same as the experimentation of other boys. Tey are friends who at times frustrate one another but who have a bond of loyalty that is touchingly displayed. Te play opens with the suicide of a boy and ends in a political stalemate which might have been worthy of any politician trying to maintain power. At times the play can seem a litle slow but these young actors are clearly the cream of a new crop worth watching. Only one adult appears on stage, the aesthete from London played wonderfully by Julian Wadham. He seems very sweet but then in the way


I clearly remember the first time I stood in front of St Cuthbert’s coffin in the crypt of Durham Cathedral. It wasn’t the wood of the coffin, nor the pectoral cross that fascinated me. It was Cuthbert’s comb! A comb is such a personal possession. My mind went back to the Sixties when, as a seminarian, I had gone to see the exhibition in London of artefacts from the excavations at Masada – King Herod’s great desert fortress that had been the scene of the last stand of Jewish rebels against


legions. Tere among all the


valuable


the Roman and


‘important’ exhibits was a small showcase with a couple of combs in it. Tey had belonged to two Jewish women, who, like nearly all of the others, had commited suicide the night before the


June 2014 ■ newdirections ■ 21


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