Our Boys, Duchess Theatre - review

In a military hospital six injured squaddies find ways to alleviate inertia and struggle to come to terms with post-service life
13 December 2012

There’s an impressive array of young male talent from British TV and film checked into Ward 9, Bay 4 of the Queen Elizabeth Military Hospital, Woolwich.

Laurence Fox (Lewis), Arthur Darvill (Doctor Who) and Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom from the Harry Potter series) are just three of six young soldiers convalescing from injuries both physical and mental in Our Boys (1993).

Playwright Jonathan Lewis spent time in an Army hospital and the tang of lived experience is palpable. The year is 1984 and the focus of military attention is Northern Ireland. Tours of the Province plus IRA attacks on the mainland colour these soldiers’ backgrounds, although not all have seen active service.

Potential Officer Menzies (Jolyon Coy) is a gauche Army scholar yet to do his Sandhurst stint and it is his arrival into a tightly knit bunch of squaddies that starts to turn the wheel of dramatic momentum. Try as he might, he doesn’t fit easily into the daily round of gallows humour, friendly banter and incessant talk about sex.

Cock of the ward, in more ways than one, is Fox’s Joe, known to his mates as the “Battersea Boner”. With “just” a finger missing, Joe appears the least seriously injured, but as the tension mounts in the superb second act, there are some startling reversals of fortune.

Director David Grindley coaxes a terrific sense of edgy camaraderie and snappy loyalty from the group, who handle with sensitivity the men’s growing awareness that, outside Army life, a highly uncertain future awaits. There’s a delightful parody of a scene from The Deer Hunter via a game called The Beer Hunter; it’s astonishing how funny it is to watch actors repeatedly cover each other with the contents of shaken-up lager cans.

All six performers are a pleasure to watch. Darvill and Lewis whizz about in wheelchairs, the former’s character as canny as the latter’s is gullible. Fox has a cool command of the stage and a cherishable line in dry wit, but Coy calls Joe’s bluff through Menzies’ quiet dignity. Lewis Reeves makes fine work of Ian, horribly crippled and struggling to learn to speak again.

Booking to December 15.

Box Office: 0844 482 9672

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