Across the road from Southwark Playhouse there’s a full-sized billboard ad for the show that’s just opened in the Large proving that, if nothing else, Oliver Lansley’s
The Trench has a larger-than-usual publicity budget for a fringe show. With detailed design, original songs (composed and performed by Alexander Wolfe, with the ensemble’s James Hastings also playing multiple instruments,) projections and extensive use of puppets, Les Enfants Terribles’ 2012 show, being seen in London for the first time in this revival, certainly wears its high production values on its sleeve; what else it’s really got to offer is a bit more doubtful. Lansley, who also co-directs (with James Seager) plays Bert, a First World War soldier whose former job as a miner makes him an obvious candidate to be a sapper – digging tunnels under no man’s land to bury mines near the enemy trenches. It’s a job with the inevitable added danger of getting caved in when a bomb goes off nearby, which is what happens to Bert and his new assistant Collins (Kadell Herida.)
