Review: DEV’S ARMY by Stuart D Lee at Bread and Roses Theatre, Clapham 8 – 19 March 2022

‘funny and engaging with a reminder of tragedy and a lightly worn history lesson thrown in for good measure’ ★★★★

A remote hut on the remote coast of Ireland looking over towards the Isle of Man in 1941. The tricolour of the four-year-old Irish Republic hangs on the wall, framed by portraits of Pope Pius XII and Eamon de Valera, the Taoiseach who calls the war engulfing non-neutral Europe, and especially the hated English, ‘ the Emergency’.

Three men in a hut – here to guard the coastline of an evening against smugglers and worse, an early warning system if the Emergency threatens Ireland’s shore. There’s an old codger, a former soldier who takes himself seriously and a young eejit, and this night seems as tedious as any other in this quiet backwater, until there’s an explosion and the washed-up body of a barely alive woman is carried into this very male space. Who she is and why she’s there at all in a dress not meant for evening fishing is the plot of what starts a whimsical comedy, takes its time to begin its main story then heads rapidly towards tragic thriller.  In form the play resembles Conor McPherson’s The Weir – lonely Irish men who yarn about the old days and frustrate each other mightily with their tall tales until the arrival of a woman brings unpleasing reality into their comfortably numb lives.

The set design (by Phil Newman, with lighting by Amy Daniels and sound Paul Freeman) is terrific, a convincingly windswept hut – pin-ups of Maureen O’Sullivan and other Hollywood stars hiding in a corner away from the baleful glares of those stern old misogynists Dev and the Pope. It’s a good example of a set complementing the material’s contradictions – one of the central contradictory arguments among the three men (Nick Danan, Eoin McAndrew and Paul Murphy) is whether England’s misfortune is Ireland’s opportunity or whether the Nazis really are worth fighting against.

It takes a while to get going, but the relationships between the three are well drawn and very well performed – the frustration of the former soldier who can’t rely on the old codger or young fool to get anything right a particular pleasure. If there’s a flaw, it’s that the arrival of the young woman (Niamh Finlay) is too long delayed, making the switch from comfortable comedy (the title gives the tone of that) to tragedy a little too abrupt, almost as if two plays have been patched together, and there’s also a character shift that while funny and surprising doesn’t quite convince. But the play’s funny and engaging with a reminder of tragedy and a lightly worn history lesson thrown in for good measure and production values a cut well above the usual pub theatre class

Review: DEV’S ARMY by Stuart D Lee at Bread and Roses Theatre, Clapham 8 – 19 March 2022

Box Office: https://www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk/whats-on.html

Director: Helen Niland

Presented by Strange Fish

Reviewer:

David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow), Better Together (Jack Studio, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, Joy Goun award, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.