This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
Britannia Waves The Rules
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
4/5
BLACKPOOL, a crumbling facade. Poverty seeps into every grain of sand on the Golden Mile.
There’s a lad there, Carl Jackson, with no qualifications and no job — doesn’t want a job. No prospects. Frustrated anger drives him to obsessive running.
Has he any future? Yes, according to the recruiting sergeant, he is ideal soldier material.
For Carl, it’s a ticket out of a life stagnating through indifference. In under a year he will be honed into a killing machine.
This is the frightening world of modern warfare captured in Gareth Farr’s gritty new play Britannia Waves the Rules.
Carl is pissed off with Blackpool, pissed off with the people and, well, just pissed off. The army is his escape and, at first, this seems to be the answer to all his problems — excitement, adventure, travel and comrades, everything that is lacking in his life.
But when he is pitched into combat in Afghanistan the fun quickly disappears and the real meaning of hell on Earth becomes apparent.
Dan Parr is outstanding as Carl. He’s onstage for the play’s 90-minute running time, with no interval, in itself a tall order. But the exhausting emotional journey he endures, from young scally to mentally scarred and deeply traumatised man, is astonishing.
The play, which won the Bruntwood Prize in 2011, is running in rep with The Last Days Of Troy and while there may be over 3,000 years between the two works, the message is the same. There is no glory in war and the ruling class are past masters at using young people as cannon fodder.
Farr says in the programme notes that his play is not trying to make a comment on the military and, if that’s true, then he’s signally failed.
His play is a devastating indictment of the military regime and captures how its cynical leaders manipulate young men and women into committing horrendous acts of cruelty while devising justifications for their actions.
As the distraught Perkins says: “It is not Rule Britannia, Britannia waves the rules and becomes cruel Britannia.”
Runs in repertoire until June 7. Box office: (0161) 833-9833.
