Reviewed by Peter Landau

Fellow Ross theatregoers- where were you last week, particularly last Wednesday and Thursday evenings? You missed a superlative performance of contrasting styles and content!

The evening began with Christopher Kell’s rarely performed one act play, “A Way to Mandalay“, in which we were witnesses to a human crisis taking place in a field hospital on the Western front. After the interval there was an evocative mix of voice and song again focused on World War One. Both halves caught the essential message of the whole evening the brutality and destructiveness of that conflict.

Mandalay was very effectively set and lit challenged us with the continuing agonies of a shell shocked young soldier at the Front - an acting challenge which was superbly met by Richard Watson. Injury and loss of identity was of no consequence and in spite of the protests of his nurse and fellow patients, convincingly portrayed by Jackie Bedford, Roger Williams and Ray Smith, this unfortunate young man was declared fit for duty and his ‘cowardice’ officially rewarded with a firing squad.

After a much needed interval, we were treated to Brian Jackson’s potpourri of songs, readings, poems and vignettes in which, for example, Ray Smith’s rendition of The Road to Mandalay was certainly a very robust presentation! The Kitty Eckersley Diaries which followed gave Michelle Cooper a chance to present her varied acting and singing skills whilst George Tait’s Gallipoli brought a lump to the throat and perhaps even a tear to the eye. Further opportunities occurred for other members of the cast to show their talents particularly Mary Brigg whom, I suspect could have been on the star list of the Music Halls of that age.

The finale of ‘Only Remembered’ captured the varied moods of 1914 - 1918 and gradually brought us back to what perhaps was the Director, Gordon Brigg‘s, central belief - the absolute futility of what was at that time hailed as ‘The Great War’