Night Falls on Burma at Hope Theatre Review
Written by Jasmine for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
This short, well-paced play by Paul Stone manages to pack a lot into its’ just 45 minute runtime - from queer romance during WW2, the ethical questions of fighting in a war, and the role of Indian soldiers in the WW2 army. You will walk away turning over the conversations in your mind again, wanting to know more about the world they live in.
The play’s strengths are in how it builds up the world-views of each character - each of their perspectives is nuanced and thought-provoking, shedding light on the mentality of soldiers in the Second World War from a different angle. I found it particularly impactful when each of the three soldiers this play centres on talked about the role their fathers played in the war twenty years earlier. It reminds you that those wars are exactly a generation apart - the twenty-year-olds who survived the last war were often sending their children into the next one. The details of the moments like these create a deeper understanding of how these soldiers might have viewed the war than most war stories do. The story is at its best at its most specific, and the more we learn about who they were before the war, the more we are invested in their characters.
Sebastian Barrett as Corporal Ross gave an exceptional performance in this capacity - he brought an intensity to his scenes that heightened the stakes significantly, and brought his character’s story to life with so much depth. Although you may not always agree with him, you are never unable to sympathise with him, a fact which holds the play together. It is a play of different perspectives, which doesn’t necessarily put one above another.
The exception to that, quite rightly, is the highlighting of how oppressive the British ideals were at that time towards anyone who wasn’t heterosexual. The choice to frame this homophobia as a colonial concept in itself when Corporal Kumar talks to Private Shaw about his fluid ideas of sexuality is an under-explored angle on historical queer relationships that I would love to see more of. Tate Jackson’s performance is perfect to express these ideas - his character’s gentleness and eloquence give the piece a lot of its most memorable lines, providing a character for the audience to trust in the heightened situation the play covers. Barnaby Rothschild also brings to life the essential coming-of-age moment, which makes up much of the core plot, reminding you that he is at the age where most of us were figuring out our sexuality, only he must do it in a war zone.
It is a simply presented and thoughtful play which makes use of the props it has and some excellent direction from Scott Le Crass, which keeps the characters feeling like they are in an army camp, finding a lot of the setting cues in their actions/body language. The ending feels somewhat abrupt and loses a little impact in being so, and I would love to see this story and these conflicts developed further in future runs of this show.
It is well worth a watch whilst it is in the Hope Theatre, as it will shed some light on a moment in history we all think we know but rarely see from this perspective.
Night Falls on Burma played at the Hope Theatre on 6 & 7 July.
★★★★
