‘The
Accrington Pals’
by Peter Whelan
27th
– 30th November 2002
Millennium Festival Studio Theatre, Central Methodist Church, Lincoln
For
our autumn 2002 production we chose a play with a sombre subject.
‘The Accrington Pals’ tells the story of a group of
friends from Accrington in Lancashire who answered Kitchener’s
call and enlisted in the British Army at the beginning of the
Great War. Accrington was the smallest community in the country to
raise its own ‘Pals’ battalion, and on the opening day
of
the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916 - its first major action
- the battalion suffered devastating losses. Of some 720
Accrington Pals who took part in the attack, 584 were killed, wounded
or missing. The losses were hard to bear in a community
where nearly everyone had a relative or friend who had been killed
or wounded.
‘The
Accrington Pals’ is based on real history, but its characters
are fictitious. It is not only the story of a band of young men
who enlisted and died in France; it is also the story of the womenfolk
who were left behind, who grew into their new-found
independence and who slowly came to realise that the propaganda they
were being fed was based on lies.
Steve
Watters directed a cast of ten which included experienced actors as
well as two newcomers to the stage. The production
was the first to be staged by Common Ground at the Millennium Festival
Studio Theatre, a recently refurbished theatre space
above Lincoln’s Central Methodist Church.
Those
who took part and those who watched were moved by the sense of history
made flesh on the stage. The Lincoln Chronicle
described the production as ‘an impressive ensemble showing,
bringing real credibility to the script’s everyday banter’
with ‘a
range of accomplished individual performances.’ It concluded:
‘The Accrington Pals confirms the company as welcome
reinforcements on the city’s drama front.’
The
Lincolnshire Echo agreed that ‘the director successfully balanced
the play’s action while providing a touching insight into
real people’s lives.’
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