Not about Heroes, Trafalgar Studios - theatre review

This timely revival of Stephen MacDonald’s elegant two-hander follows the friendship of war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, who met at the Craiglockhart hospital for nervous disorders, where they were both treated for shellshock

Complex reactions to war: Simon Jenkins as Wilfred Owen and Alasdair Craig as Siegfried Sassoon

Fiona Mountford13 November 2014

In this sombre Armistice week, it’s a fine idea to open a London revival of Stephen MacDonald’s elegant 1982 two-hander about the enduring friendship between soldiers and war poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It’s sobering all over again to be reminded that Owen’s parents learnt of his death on November 11, 1918.

The two men, with wide-eyed Owen (Simon Jenkins) hero-worshipping the more established, urbane Sassoon (Alasdair Craig), met in 1917 at the Craiglockhart hospital for nervous disorders in Edinburgh (the setting for Pat Barker’s novel Regeneration), where both were treated for shellshock.

Sassoon encouraged Owen with his writing and together the men fretted over their complex reactions to war, alternately appalled by and attracted to combat.

MacDonald sensibly bases the play around the men’s own poems and personal writings; this makes the piece feel authentic — there’s a lovely suggestion of the literary scene of the period — if rather ponderous at times in Caroline Clegg’s production. There is, after all, little movement involved in reading aloud a letter. Nonetheless, Jenkins and Craig are an appealing pair, the former all red-cheeked eagerness, the latter commanding, reserved and conflicted.