by Ian Diddams
images by Mike Stevens
This week marks 25 years since 9/11 (11 September 2001), when the world awoke to the news that Al Qaeda hijackers had flown two commercial airliners into the Twin Towers, causing their collapse and a devastating loss of life. In 2006, British troops were deployed to Helmand Province; these years saw some of the heaviest combat and the highest UK casualties. UK combat operations formally ended in 2014, having had a very real human cost for the UK with 457 British service personnel killed, more than 600 serious casualties and thousands of medical evacuations. (Kitty Muffet – Director).
“Pink Mist” by Owen Sheers portrays the experiences of three young men from Bristol, and the women in their lives, who sign up to the British Army aged in their teens in 2008 and are deployed in Afghanistan. Its content, though fictional, is drawn through Sheer’s interviews with actual military veterans that served there for a previous play “for The Two Worlds of Charlie F.” It delivers an, at times, harrowing story of three boys going to war, three boys in war, and three boys coming home from war, broken, damaged … or draped in a flag. While three women, girlfriend, mother and wife with young child become equally scarred through concerns, worry and grief. “Boys” and “Women” – two sides of the same coin. We live in a patriarchal society but it’s the matriarchs that are its glue and carry the burdens, and “Pink Mist” amply demonstrates this as the women pick up the pieces.
The story was originally written and recorded for BBC Radio 4, and broadcast as five, fifteen-minute episodes in 2012, then adapted into a verse-drama book in 2013, winning the “Wales Book of the Year” award in 2014. Subsequently it was again adapted as a stage play which premiered in 2015 at Bristol Old Vic. As such as a stage play it is not “action” heavy yet director Kitty Muffet has created some powerful non-active interaction; tableaus and frozen positions from characters not involved in a scene or dialogue. Some of these tableaus last for multiple minutes – the opening scene is at least ten minutes during which the only speech – bar a minimal very few lines – is given by Arthur played by Jonathan Taft. During that monologue there is movement from characters directly involved in the story when mentioned, but otherwise all sit perfectly still until it is their own time to strut and fret their hour upon the stage. All actors remain on stage throughout the entire play in this powerful manner.
The book also won the 2018 “Wilfred Owen Poetry Award”, extremely fitting as the play evokes connections with that poet’s own WW1 works – as the three lads sign up, gung-ho and crying “Who wants to play war” and desperate for action, we surely recall immediately “Dulce et Decorum est”, and the pals battalions of 1914.
It would be remiss to give any more of the plot away as its strength and its impacts come as each new layer of the story is revealed, so I urge you to go and see it this week at the Mission Theatre, Bath, performed by “Next Stage”.
The boys Arthur, Taff and Hads are played respectively by Jonathan Taft, a Next Stage stalwart, Arthur Williams, in his first appearance since school, and James Hacker, in his second Next stage production. All three excellently convey the youthful exuberance and naiveness when signing up, then the shocking appreciation of the realities of war, and then the consequences of their own involvement.
No less excellent are the women in their lives picking up the pieces after initial worries, arguments and concerns… Arthur’s girlfriend played by Perrine Maillot, another long-standing Next Stage performer, Had’s devoted mother Sarah, wonderfully performed by Tania Lyons and demonstrating all her stage craft and experience, and Taff’s young wife Lisa played by Poppy Morris in her stage debut … Poppy has set her own bar extremely high right at the start of what must be a stunning acting career.
This is Kitty Muffet’s directorial debut with Next Stage and as mentioned above already has created something very special with this dialogue heavy and precise actioned piece, including some clever choreography especially in the opening monologue by Arthur. She is aided and abetted by Andrew Muffet as Stage Manager, and tech crew Hannah Johnson, Jamie Woodington and Kris Nuttal. Music provided by Bill Whelan.
Amongst all the wonderful prose, and delivery there are snippets of realisation oneself… the use of colour descriptions throughout the play… blue, green, red, black, rose… and pink. And if you don’t know the meaning of the play’s title before you see this, you will learn it well before the end. Then there is the juxtaposition of two types of “friendly fire” – one war, one domestic.
This is not to be missed. Take a hanky, Have a stiff drink afterwards.
You may well need both.
“Pink Mist” is performed at The Mission Theatre, September 9th-12th at 7.30pm, with a matinee at 2pm on Saturday 12th.
In addition, there is a Q&A with the author and playwright, Owen Sheers, at The Mission Theatre between the matinee and evening shows. Held at 4.15pm in the theatre, entry is £5, all of which goes to the charities being supported by this show, the Royal British Legion and the Royal British Veterans Enterprise, supporting those affected by the Afghanistan conflict and by conflicts past and future.
Tickets are available from https://www.missiontheatre.co.uk/tickets?category=1.+Pink+Mist
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