True tales from Newtown cemetery

Bringing real local figures to life on stage is an intriguing concept – one with easy potential to be distasteful or sensationalist in the wrong hands, but not the Resurrection Players.

20th Century Casualties is the group’s sixth production and features three playlets, all directed by Ros Clow, telling the stories of three Newbury men who died in dramatic circumstances in the Second World War.

Shocking, by Martin Strike, starred Andrew Smith as Frederick Gardner, a cable jointer for the Wessex Electricity Company who was electrocuted while working at Pangbourne Sub-Station on November 12, 1938.

The scene opens on a coven-like roundtable gathering of pipe-smoking bureaucrats, deliberating the fallout of this unfortunate occurrence. Enter Gardner, sporting a partly charred attire – kudos to the wardrobe department.

The jury returned a verdict of ‘death by misadventure’, but Gardner’s colleagues maintained he followed correct procedure until his untimely death, spelling wilful negligence by his superiors.

The next playlet was Speaking, by Ros Clow, about popular ventriloquist Alfred Jessett, played by Steve Wallis, an RAF corporal who, convinced he would be shot on his return, took his own life while on Christmas leave in 1940.

The double act dynamic of Jessett and his puppet ‘Joe’, voiced by Graham Slater, provided welcome comic relief.

“You can tell they're our normal lot – they're all old!” quips Joe, stirring a laugh from the audience.

Such humour adds balance to the tragic undertones, emphasised by Jessett’s clutching of the cord he used to strangle himself, a fine piece of direction.

The last playlet hits most poignantly. Sinking, by Brian Sylvester, stars Smith as Jack Evans, a stoker first class in the Royal Navy killed aboard the HM Submarine Triad on October 20, 1940. A personal story for Sylvester, whose father Eric likely knew Jack Evans.

The talented cast, featuring Judith Bunting as Jack’s mother Lydia Humphries and Steve Schollar as her friend Syd Part, demonstrates the medium’s full potential, breathing life into the young sailor’s lost words in a moving nostalgic exchange, more powerful after the inevitable realisation the ink will soon run dry.

The cast delivered convincing performances all round and the level of research shined through each monologue.

The evening concluded with a group rendition of Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again.

And I hope we will.

MIREK GOSNEY