That is from a poem by Laurence Binyon about World War I. I saw the UBC production of "The Wars" on Saturday night and it was terrific. The set was completely open and you could see the artifice of the stage very clearly -- they used a drop cloth for the trenches and the roads and the dikes of Holland. You could even see the person doing the sounds, right there on the stage -- it was hand made, not electronic, which I really liked.
Sound was very important for the play -- there are lots of references to animals throughout the novel and the play -- the main character, Robert Ross, loves animals and he pays a great price in trying to protect them -- and so animal sounds linked many of the scenes, from his life at home in Canada to the horrors of the trenches. At one point in the play, the sounds disappear and the soldiers wonder why it's suddenly quiet. I knew, because of the stories of my mother about her uncles who fought in the trenches, that silence was terrifying, because it was a precursor to the gas. My mother's uncle, David, was a victim of a gas attack. He survived, but he was never healthy after that and had trouble breathing and eating for the rest of his life.
I mentioned before that the actor playing Robert Ross was our own David Volpov. He was outstanding in the role, which required him to be very vulnerable and open to the audience, just as we watched him change through his experiences as a soldier. David has always been a very brave actor and I was so impressed at how he took all of us in the audience down the terrible path that Robert Ross had to walk through the play. He is a young innocent fragile Canadian boy at the beginning of the play and we see him struggle to lead his men and face the horror of man's cruelty while he attempts to hold onto a vestige of himself. It is a remarkable performance, and I hope some of you will be able to see it before the play closes on November 23.
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