Poetry In The
Theatreby Laurie Nelken
Poetry In The
Theatreby Laurie Nelken
I recently had the pleasure of seeing Peter Barkworth in a one man show as the World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon, at the Theatre Royal, Winchester. In the play, Peter Barkworth enters the stage clutching a battered old copy of Sassoon’s works and explains to the audience his discovery of Sassoon’s poetry as a child and his abiding love for it. He then enters the role of Sassoon, tracing in the first person his life from his boyhood in Kent, the break-up of his parents’ marriage, his Jewish ancestry and his days at prep school, where he discovers his poetic gift, a gift which his mother actively encouraged.
His recruitment in World War I, his subsequent disillusionment and disgust with the war effort, provided him with fertile ground for his most memorable and enduring work. His letter of protest to the British Authorities over the war resulted in him being interred for ‘nervous disorder’. He met and formed a friendship with that other great war poet Wilfred Owen. His enveloping depression by the war’s end is only resolved by his poem Everyone Sang.
Throughout the play, Barkworth suggests Sassoon’s life and times with the minimum of props. He doesn’t dress up for the part, but is content to wear a conventional business suit, however he conveys convincingly Sassoon’s sadness about his parents’ break-up; his doubts about his craft; his disgust with the war which gives a positively biting and satirical edge to his poetry; his at first cautious friendship with Wilfred Owen, which subsequently develops into fully-fledged respect for a fellow writer with a mutual feeling concerning the conduct of the military and civil authorities in the war to end all wars.
At the end, he conveys in a seeringly honest portrayal, Sassoon’s despair and depression with the horrors and atrocities, a depression which is alleviated almost unconsciously by his penning of the poem Everyone Sang. Reprising the poem, Barkworth brings the evening to a triumphant close, and he holds aloft the battered copy of Sassoon he showed at the beginning.
Peter Barkworth’s Siegfried Sassoon, the Story of the Young Soldier Poet, subsequently moved to the Hampstead Theatre, London.
First published in Sol 21.