While Benjamin Cain gives an excellent performance, Private Peaceful loses some impact in the transition from page to stage
Private Peaceful, based on the book of the same name by beloved author Michael Morpurgo, made its way to The Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh as part of its UK tour. While in some ways this play acts as a fine adaptation of the original source material, it lacks sorely in others.
*Spoilers for both the play and book ahead*
The first thing that must be addressed is the decision to make this both a one-man and one-act play. There is merit to both choices and while it does an admirable job of telling the story through this structure, there are ways in which it does unfortunately miss the mark and quite crucially. The ultimate point of Morpurgo’s story was to tell the tale of a soldier in WW1 who was shot by a firing squad “for cowardice in the face of the enemy”. This is confirmed by a note from the author himself. Over 300 British soldiers suffered this fate throughout the war and were given unfair trials, some only lasting 20 minutes. Morpurgo’s story is based primarily on a 19 year-old soldier’s letter to his mother explaining this and letting her know of the injustice. The name Private Peaceful came from a random gravestone he happened upon in Bedford Cemetery outside Ypres. The point behind the narrative is clear and aims to highlight the soldiers who went through this as well as those they left behind. In the book, this is done well. In the play, it becomes more complicated.
It’s a real shame because on the face of it, this acts as a very good adaptation. Told entirely from the POV of our main character Thomas “Tommo” Peaceful, much of that dialogue and perspective is transported straight from the page to the stage. The overarching narrative is told through the relationship between the Peaceful brothers, Tommo and Charlie. Almost all the main events are kept in and it manages to do this in a short timeframe. However, that timeframe does bring limitations to how much can be told and in what way. Hence, an 80-minute runtime with one actor as our focus yet missing key details. One must concede that when adapting a book into a film, TV show or stage production, certain sacrifices must be made and most are passable. The most glaring change though is the end of the story and the inevitable death everything builds up to. At the end of play, Tommo is the one who is killed; at the end of the book, it is Charlie.
This changes the framing of the entire story and not for the better. This alteration does a huge disservice to Charlie’s character. This tale revolves around the relationship between the brothers and much of the details that are left out strip the emotional resonance that relationship has on an audience. Fundamentally, while there is of course a world in which one could consider a switch and try to make it work, there is no world in which Charlie would sit back and accept what is essentially the murder of his brother. There is a key final conversation between Charlie and Tommo in the original story that is what ultimately leads to Tommo’s tortured acceptance of the situation. While I don’t think it would have been nearly as effective if the roles were reversed onstage, it would have potentially been passable but this conversation never takes place and without it, it leaves things in disarray and creates a messy, unresolved ending. Without the details of Charlie’s time in war and at home, the death does not hit in the same fashion.
All of this being said, it can’t be ignored that Benjamin Cain gave an outstanding performance. The strength of doing this solely from Tommo’s perspective comes entirely from his talent and whimsy. Cain captures the essence of Tommo perfectly, through early childhood into his later years. It was 100% as if the character had leapt from the page and come to life onstage. He also did exceptionally well with all the other characters he had to voice through that POV. It takes a tremendous amount of nerve and dedication to your craft to be able to get up onstage alone for 80 minutes and portray multiple characters all from the mind of one young boy. It deserves great respect. The use of sound effects for things like gunfire and whizzbangs were also a welcome addition to help with the immersion.
Overall, despite its issues, there is still a worthwhile story here but it absolutely loses something in the switch-up of which Private Peaceful loses his life. This leads to a less impactful version of the story but the talented display from Cain will still keep an audience hooked whether they’ve read the book or not, which is probably most important.