Michael Morpurgo has already brought lyricism to life in the trenches in War Horse (the National’s handsome touring version is in Glasgow this week). But in the latest offering from Cirencester’s intimate Barn Theatre, which already has a string of Morpurgo adaptations to its name — the focus shifts to the Second World War.
In the Mouth of the Wolf, published in 2018, draws on a story from the writer’s family history, recounting his uncle Francis Cammaerts’s service in occupied France as a member of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Cammaerts made an unlikely hero, since, as Simon Reade’s unflashy narrative makes clear, he had originally been a pacifist.
He began to reassess his beliefs after the death in action of his younger brother Pieter, an actor turned RAF navigator. (The play’s enigmatic title derives from “In bocca al lupo”, the Italian equivalent of the backstage term “break a leg”.) Parachuted into enemy territory under the code name Roger, Cammaerts was eventually awarded the Distinguised Service Order and the Légion d’Honneur.
Given the recent controversy about Gen Z’s alleged reluctance to go to war, Philip Wilson’s bare-bones production, featuring an accomplished cast of just three, arrives at an apt moment. It is a modest evening of low-key adventure, as befits a man who seemed reluctant to be made a fuss of.
John Hastings cuts a memorably self-deprecating figure as Francis, who makes the transition from assimilated schoolboy — his father was the Belgian poet Emile Cammaerts — to conventional undergraduate, his original accent soon fading away. Shaun McCourt, who plays Pieter, switches between multiple roles, including intelligence officers and Resistance operatives. Helena Antoniou is kept equally busy, reappearing as Francis’s wife, Nan, and other characters, from Cammaerts senior to sinister Germans and the SOE agent codenamed “Pauline”. Yoav Segal’s set design has a utilitarian quality befitting an era of wartime make do and mend. Two simple moving panels provide a backdrop; school desks are recycled as aeroplanes and cars.
If, like me, you have not read the book, you may find the narrative a little breathless at times. And Reade flirts with cliché in the opening sequence, showing Francis’s appearance on that primetime staple of yesteryear This Is Your Life. You are also caught off-balance by the frustrations that Nan suddenly expresses towards the end. All we see are blurred snapshots of a marriage. Cammaerts was clearly a remarkable man but we are left wanting to know more about him.
★★★☆☆
120min
Barn Theatre, Cirencester, to May 10, barntheatre.org.uk
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