Full Length Play.    (drama)

Male 6            Female 3       (Main Stage and a Thrust Stage)

(Back or front projected pictures from the First World War. CD of pictures from Author -see some?)

A very powerful play with strong language. This play was written a young audience in mind, to pass on via the stage, the awfulness of the Great War. Three young football hooligans, have travelled down from Essex to watch their team perform in the village of Morton, Devon.  The play starts with fight taking place in a public house (noises off).  The three young hooligans are eventually expelled from the pub, and spill out onto the stage.  The leader of this small motley gang, (Smiffie) throws a flowerpot through the pub window and they make their escape through the audience.  An old tramp, makes a bed for himself on the park bench, stage right of a War Memorial, and covers himself up with newspapers.  The three young thugs, eventually end up next to the War Memorial.  Where they take drugs, and under pressure from Smiffie, one of the gang members reluctantly sprays the War Memorial with paint. Their presence, disturbs the tramp. Initially friendly, he gains their trust and shares a bottle of liquor with them. However his mood changes, when he discovers the graffiti on the Memorial. He is appalled that the three do not seem to know what the memorial represents, (one of them even thinking that it is a grave for someone called "Lestwe Forget").  In his fury he starts to tell a story of the First World War, insisting that they listen to it.  As he does so he rechristens the three with names from the Memorial.  As his story starts  to unfold, actors perform it on the thrust stage in front of him. Slowly, the three thugs take on the personality of Harry Fenton, Tom Kendrick, and Frederick Lear, and they now talk in thick Devon accents. The play follows these three 1914 farm workers, to the trenches of the First World War, the effects on the women they leave behind and finally the battle of the Somme. (During parts of this play, the tramp narrates and pictures from the period are projected. With sound effects the horror that was the First World War is recreated) 
Finally the three return to the twenty-first century. Smiffie has been severely effected by the experience, whilst his two companions remember nothing, and thinking he’s having a bad trip, leave him alone on stage. In the final scene, in tears he salutes the memorial, and poppies cascade down. The audience are now left with the decision.  Did the three actually travel back in time, or, was it just the effects of the drugs?

The production will see its first premiere this October in South Devon.

For tickets and more information visit www.toadstheatre.co.uk

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