This is London
First seen in 1986, Robert Holman’s three short plays are linked by the shadow of war and a trio of classcrossing meetings.
In Being Friends (the first and most effective) a sickly, effete and openly gay young man (based on writer and artist Denton Welch and played with great precision by Matthew Tennyson) encounters a virile conscientious objector (a Quaker from Manchester currently working on the land) as he sunbathes in the Kent countryside in 1944, with doodlebugs landing not far away.
Then, in Lost, set in 1982, a working class mother (a hurt Susan Brown) learns that the estranged son she hasn’t heard from in five years has been killed in the Falklands when a naval lieutenant (his father a Vice Admiral) knocks on her door. And finally, in the longest play and the one which gives the trilogy its name, an almost mute young boy – abandoned by his mother and left in the unwilling care of his angry, foul-mouthed squaddie stepfather (Ben Batt) – scrawls messages on his forearm, instead of speaking, in an unwitting imitation of the numbers tattooed on the skin of the elderly German artist who tries to help them.
Peter Gill’s sympathetic direction of these subtle vignettes (played out against a simple, unobtrusive set) allows Holman’s moments of truth and tenderness, hurt and conciliation to make their own quiet impact, and adds a further layer of resonance as the characters crisscross the stage between the plays, like ghostly memories of the casualties of wars past and present.
Donmar until 26 May
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