Clamber Up The Crucifix

My recent visits to Leicester's Upstairs at The Western have been for a wide range of fluffy, amusing Comedy Festival gigs so it was a nice change to be witness to a piece of emotionally draining theatre.
Clamber up the crucifix is as good a piece of anti war theatre as you are likely to see. Especially written for the World War One centenary and premiered by the awesome Off The Fence Theatre Company, this is a castigation of all war, especially the appalling waste of life at the beginning of the last century when soldiers were literally only cannon fodder.
Jonny McClean interprets admirably the many characters created by author John Kitchen in this sorry tale of Parker, a lowly telegraph operator in the dying days of the Great War, who is ruled by his conscience on that fateful day that peace was finally declared.
Told in a series of flashbacks, Parker's road to post traumatic stress disorder is chronicled from his arrival in the trenches of Flanders, a virginal new recruit, right up to his unsympathetic bundling into a lunatic asylum just as the Armistice came into force. Not only is his cavalier treatment by those that are supposed to care for him highlighted but, like Blackadder before it, this play focuses attention on the absolute stupidity of sending men to their certain death for no clear advantage.
Directed by the talented Gary Phillpott this play should be compulsory viewing for all apologists for armed conflicts. Clamber up the crucifix is on again at Upstairs at The Western on Weds 5 March 2014. Grab a ticket if there are any left. Tonight was completely sold out so good luck with that!

First published in Western Gazette 
© Paul Towers 3/3/2014