Review of The RSC’s The Christmas Truce

This is a somewhat belated review of this festive feast. However, the central aspect is more the varying emotions experienced during the first few months of World War One than any ‘Christmas is the time to spend with your family and that's more important than any amount of gifts’ type message. We’re also still commemorating the First World War’s centenary. Humanity is the pivotal moral message and this is captured in a particularly poignant scene after the two opposing forces have played football and are stood around chatting. It's at this moment that the soldiers, on both sides, realise the commonalities between them and that the other side isn't the foul stereotype espoused in the propaganda of their home country… and that both countries are inciting men to fight with the same strategy of distributing  misinformation about the enemy.

The RSC’s Deputy Artistic director Erica Whyman directed Phil Porter’s moving new play and it certainly captures the complex emotions that a present day analysis of World War One provokes. The cast of the play is essentially the same as the recent RSC productions of Love’s Labour’s Lost and Love’s Labour’s Found, both of which I reviewed some months ago (http://amyeholley.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-rscsproduction-of-shakespeares.html and http://amyeholley.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/reviewof-rscs-loves-labours-won-i.html) and they excel in these roles just as much as they did in the Love’s Labour’s Lost and Found productions,  as I had expected. The play opens with the stereotyped image of the Edwardian British country village with young men playing cricket, but this quickly changes developing darker connotations of throwing grenades rather than googlies. This motion becomes a motif for dying in battle throughout the play. The recounting of the war experiences of the hearty Warwickshire country lads is not the only plot. The play also follows a group of nurses who want to help with the war effort. Unfortunately they were placed with a matron who is a stickler for the rules, allowing no room for joy and fun. As both plots unfold, inevitably the nurses care for the wounded soldiers, the two groups meet and they reveal the intense emotional strain that they are both under.

Finally, this was a warm, touching family play with genuinely amusing moments of comic relief to alleviate from the deeply moving and troubling action. If it is repeated as part of the RSC screenings I strongly recommend that you go.