Stage-to-screen review: It Is Easy To Be Dead

If UK theatres had anything to celebrate at the moment, the Finborough Theatre would be celebrating its 40th birthday today. Still, it's a milestone worth marking for the ambitious fringe venue, hence my second virtual trip this week to Earl's Court. The Finborough had a unique take on marking the centenary of the First World War, and instead of doing a full season of work in 2014, its THEGREATWAR100 strand staged relevant work intermittently over five years, between the points 100 years from the war's beginning, and 100 years from its end. Even so I was probably still worn down by many shows on the subject when It Is Easy To Be Dead came along in 2016, as despite rave reviews, a transfer and an Olivier nomination, I didn't get round to seeing it live. It now forms part of their online fundraising drive, and despite being inevitably heartbreaking the play has more of a bittersweet edge to it.

War poetry is something I would automatically associate with WWI, but rather than the likes of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, Neil McPherson has looked instead to a lesser-known figure.

Lesser-known perhaps largely because Charles Hamilton Sorley (Alexander Knox) died before he could build up too large a body of work. The play opens with Sorley's parents receiving the telegram informing them of his death, just as they were expecting to see him return on leave. The framing device sees Janet (Jenny Lee) convincing William (Tom Marshall) to allow a collection of their son's poetry to be published. Initially meant just as a memento for friends and family, it ends up finding a much wider readership who find comfort in his words. But despite demand for a follow-up volume of Charles' letters, William is unwilling to share the last things he has left of his son with the world at large.

McPherson keeps things simple, basing the play around Sorley's poems and letters, and this is where much of the pathos comes from as we get to know Charles as a witty, charming man who feels ahead of his time: A public schoolboy who largely turns against the system and finds much more to admire in the regular soldiers than in his fellow officers, he's quite a liberal voice who hates the Daily Mail's jingoism and finds Rupert Brooke's work overly sentimental. Despite writing at the beginning of the war he also foreshadows the poetry that would come in the next few years: Having spent time in Germany just before war broke out - even being arrested as a spy in its early days - he's got to know and like the people he's fighting against, so his voice has a cynicism to it, his work often returning to the war as a game of chess - when do pawns first realise they're pawns?

Max Key's production intersperses the scenes with haunting music of the time, and Rob Mills' projections dispassionately accompany Charles' mentions of his friends with captions of when and how they died, but the play's heart is with the young man and his mourning parents - it's not often you see a spilt cup of coffee used to such devastating effect. It Is Easy To Be Dead may be a new play rather than one the Finborough's rediscoveries, but it does feel more like McPherson using his talent for unearthing forgotten treasures, in bringing to light a poet with a remarkably clear and distinct voice.

It Is Easy To Be Dead by Neil McPherson, based on the poetry and letters of Charles Hamilton Sorley, is available until the 7th of July on OfficialLondonTheatre's YouTube channel.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.

Photo credit: Scott Rylander.