Review: Private Peaceful – Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Produced by Joshua Beaumont and Matthew Emeny for The Production Garden in association with Exeter Northcott, Simon Reade’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s award-winning Private Peaceful first saw the stage in 2004, only one year after the book’s publication. Plays lacking merit tend towards short lives, and so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I left the Lyceum stalls impressed.

Unsurprisingly, the short, first-person fictional memoir should be so readily adaptable for a solo performance; indeed, the challenge is one of abridgement more so than dramaturgy, and Simon Reade has done a fine job.

We meet Thomas ‘Tommo’ Peaceful in the midst of the First World War, alone with his bunk and little else to do than count down the hours until dawn. Unable to sleep, he dives back into his life history, tracing the path that brought him from rural England to the battle-scarred trenches of contested France. Benjamin Cain acquits himself well in this, his debut role, his fresh-faced enthusiasm enlivening his tales of joyful childhood capers, misadventures and first love. Tommo’s love for his family, particularly big brother Charlie, shines through, as does his desperate admiration for kind-hearted neighbour Molly.

Reade does well to keep this life’s story nipping along at pace, but without starving any scene of attention. The result is a strong sense of place and time, as Tommo’s world is first made more exciting by encounters with wayward fighter pilots, before Lord Kitchener’s finger points to their village with cries of “Your Country Needs You!” (or else you’re a chicken).

Benjamin Cain Brings Warmth and Vulnerability to the Lyceum Stage

Equipped with only uniform and bunk, Cain navigates this re-lived history with charm and vulnerability. Reade wisely keeps Tommo’s stiller moments for his brief return to his present situation, otherwise encouraging the young actor to be an active re-enactor of his preceding life and times. Even his costume is used cleverly, his jacket and greatcoat left off until Tommo’s story is weighed down by the King’s shilling, leaving him in braces and a collarless shirt more suited to a child of fields and forest.

“Benjamin Cain acquits himself well in this, his debut role, his fresh-faced enthusiasm enlivening his tales of joyful childhood capers, misadventures and first love.“

As his story begins to catch up with his present, however, whilst no less committed, Cain struggles to summon the ghastly mental toll of war. A slight surfeit of sound effects, from booming cannons to gunfire, hinders rather than helps, creating the impression that we’re moving into slightly shallower waters.

Still, even if lacking a little grit, the story remains gripping right to the end. Whilst the production’s departure from the novel’s marginally less catastrophic ending feels a tad sensational, it certainly underlines Morpurgo’s themes of unforgivable injustice and the needless waste of young lives. Teachers leading scholastic field trips won’t lack material to discuss once back in the classroom, that’s for sure.

In the end, this is a timeless and affecting tale, no less relevant than when first staged. Even if it would benefit from a little more restraint where it comes to effects, Private Peaceful is a powerful piece of theatre, and a fine stage debut for a promising young actor.

All Images: Benjamin Cain in Private Peaceful © Craig Fuller