Wartime message is never compromised - review (From Stroud News and Journal)

Wartime message is never compromised - review

FIRST written and performed at the beginning of the disastrous and long-drawn-out Vietnam War, Oh What a Lovely War! was a disturbingly timely piece of theatre for the Cotswold Players to be putting on last week.

With its numbing statistics and bitter black humour - all drawn directly from events, letters and speeches which took place during the First World War - Oh What a Lovely War! never fails to shock and awe.

The Cotswold Players were understandably nervous about putting on the show given the current world situation, but this reviewer is glad they did - it will always be important to recognise and face up to how much and little has changed since 1918 and the end of the Great War.

There are direct parallels with the present day throughout the musical entertainment.

A particularly telling scene shows two British and then two German housewives discussing the exact same mendacious rumour about the opposing side's treatment of corpses.

Even more apposite was the scene, early in the second half, where businessmen from opposing sides sat shooting grouse and discussing how they were selling each other weapons and how they hoped that peace would never come.

In the face of all this spine-tingling stuff, the Cotswold Players' ensemble cast gave a magnificent show, singing and dancing their way their way through the production with a very British bonhomie, never once compromising the show's message.

It hardly bears thinking about that the First World War was supposed to be 'the war to end all wars'; as grim an irony today as it was 40 years ago.

Bravo to the Cotswold Players for such a timely, moving and unsettling production.