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Please sign up for our annual Kingstown Member's Dinner & Theatre Show.
King’s Town Players
present
Heroes
Written by Gérald Sibleyras • Translated by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Richard Linley
March 15-18 and 22-25, 2017 – 8:00 PM
Kingston Yacht Club, 1 Maitland Street, Kingston
The horrors of the First World War (1914-18) still attract the interests of playwrights, poets and filmmakers, as well as the 'man in the street'. Perhaps that’s because the war touched the lives of so many ordinary people, or that it was so well-documented, in film and the work of writers such as Wilfred Owen.
French playwright Gérald Sibleyras wrote his play 'The Wind in The Poplars' over a period of about 10 years, seeing it finally staged (apparently unsuccessfully as far as he was concerned) in Paris in 2002. This new version of Sibleyras’s work, re-named ‘Heroes’, has been translated (with minor amendments) by Tom Stoppard.
Stoppard has stated that "translation is a tricky business", and indeed it would seem to be the case – so much so that the translation stalled at the very first hurdle, the title. Apparently, there were concerns that the original title might be confused with 'The Wind In The Willows'. However the original title is far more appropriate for the subject-matter of the play, and more evocative. Title aside, the translation seems to be quite faithful, and the author at least seems happy with the finished product, and feels the current version is a step-up from his original work.
The play is based on Sibleyras’s discovery that veterans of the First World War were often retired at relatively young ages, often living-out the remainder of their lives in French military hospitals – in some cases for 30 years or more. His play takes a kind of "snapshot" of the daily lives of three of these veterans: Henri (played by David S. Lay), Gustave (played by Barry Yuen), and Philippe (played by Robert Bruce).
The play takes place on one of the terraces in the veteran’s hospital. It’s a "private" terrace in the sense that the three veterans have "captured" it for their own use, and do not invite anyone else to share it. It’s a "world within a world", a sort of mini-empire with obvious echoes of the causes of the First World War itself.
The three veterans while away their time in discussion about fellow inmates, or the nuns who care for them, or make plans for a journey (which we know will never take place) to the distant poplar trees that seem to lure them from the security of their terrace.
Sibleyras says his play is not only about human mortality but also about the universal desire "to escape from the confines of your life". Now the veterans are certainly "prisoners" just as surely if they had been captured by the enemy during the war. Though they make plans for a journey, they’re going nowhere, and they know it. The problem is that they don’t fit in the outside world any more, and indeed cannot exist or survive in it. So for me, the play is not about the desire to escape, it’s more about the legacy of war, and how the suffering of war continues even after the politicians have patched things up – it’s the lives of ordinary people which, in the process, are ruined forever.
Heroes is a gentle comedy. Although there are very funny moments – such as when the veterans are practicing roping themselves together with a hose pipe, or when they’re talking about how to please women, there’s no grittiness to the plot or the situation. And maybe that’s what Sibleyras means when he says "it’s a British play". With great acting from a top-notch cast, and a lovingly created production, it’s a show well-worth seeing
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