Stories from the War Hospital - Review

Mabh Savage was in the audience at the New Headingley Club last Friday 21 March. She posted the following review on her blog at http://bit.ly/1iDajD3 which we reproduce with her permission: 

There is an odd camaraderie at New Headingley Club, between Leeds Rhinos rugby fans about to head off to cheer on their team, and LitFest fans here to listen in contrasting silence to Stories from the War Hospital, a performance and introduction to the book of the same name.

Headingley LitFest 2014 is sub-titled Surviving, and Richard Wilcocks' painstakingly researched volume pays tribute not only to some of those who survived the First World War, but those of the 2nd Northern General Hospital at Beckett Park, Leeds, who tirelessly worked to save and rebuild the lives of those back from the front in a bad condition.

Richard introduces the book, a collection of true stories of sick and wounded soldiers, nurses, doctors and volunteers. There are clearly members of the audience who are very invested in this publication, as murmurs and even shout-outs about military acronyms and familiar names mingle with this introductory piece. One of the audience is introduced as an interviewee for the book.  There is a sense of pomp and circumstance that belies the plain and basic trim of the wooden block stage and identical folding chairs; this volume has evidently been a labour of love and great effort, and the people involved are proud to see it come to fruition.

Contact headingleyhospital@gmail.com for your copy

The performance itself is brought to us by The Vedettes, who are Richard, Katharina Arnold, Charlotte Blackburn and Hannah Robinson. The three women are in period VAD nurse's uniforms, although the wide range of roles they each take steps far outside this costume choice. The performance focuses on three of the stories from the book: the stories of Robert Bass, Dorothy Wilkinson and Margaret Anna Newbould. Imagine snapshots of the period brought to life for a brief moment; there is this sense that we are looking through a lens into the past, into tiny fragments of these peoples' lives. I think this is accentuated by the fact that these are completely true stories; the events have been retold by descendants of the protagonists; the dialogue is from the retelling of those closest to the events.

Katharina introduces the performance with a piece on acoustic guitar. The guitar is then used as a break to indicate the beginning of each new story. Music of the time is also included as part of the stories, again creating this snap shot feel; people standing together and singing, people at Christmas sitting together carolling; all little snippets of everyday life that hammer home how real, how horrifyingly accurate the descriptions of the sickness, the suffering, the wounds and the wailing really are. At one point Hannah is rocking backwards and forwards screaming, and I shiver to think of how much worse the volunteers at Beckett Park must have had it; not just one screaming soldier, but hundreds, many with no hope except the consolation that kind words and the promise of a letter home can give.

We learn of Robert Bass, the soldier who survived wounds to the leg and shoulder, only to have a shell mutilate his jaw, teeth and face. The vivid imagery of this - severed lip, smashed jaw, destroyed teeth- is hard hitting and reminds us not only of the catch-all phrase 'horror of war' but that conflict is not the large and faceless concept many of us presume it to be, but a visceral process that obliterates individuals' hopes, dreams and souls; in short, everything that makes them human. My friend Jonathan notes that often the numbers for 'Dead and Wounded' are lumped together, as these are all people who can no longer be fed into the war machine; in short, a wounded man is as useful to the military as a dead man.

Thankfully, this performance, and in turn, the book it comes from, shows us that lives can be restored, and that the de-humanising process is not irreversible in every case. Robert undergoes revolutionary maxillofacial surgery at Beckett's Park, and indeed finds something of a happy ending... Well, I won't spoil the story utterly, go read the book!

Charlotte plays the role of Nurse Margaret Anna Newbould, a nurse at Beckett Park who became Acting Matron of the Formosa, a hospital ship that carried casualties from the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Vedettes create a gut wrenching image of the sweat, sickliness and overall sordidness of life on board a ship overfull of the dead and dying. You can feel the heat and the hopelessness. Margaret was much decorated for her service, and one can't help but feel that a medal is the least someone deserves for being one of the only bright lights in these poor souls' existence... 

Katharina and Hannah play the couple Dorothy Wilkinson and Clifford Pickles: sweethearts torn apart by war, and then damaged further by Clifford's onset of shell shock. This for me is the most heart wrenching story; psychological trauma is an enemy one cannot fight with bullets and aggression, and of course in the time of the First World War, little was known about how to treat it. Both performances here are strong, human and touching.

As the show finishes, I'm left with a conflicting set of emotions; once more I am shown the grim reality of war, yet to see these close ups of the people affected most strongly by it is something of a privilege. I feel like I have been invited to see behind the scenes of a great play, and am not disappointed by the backdrops and actors. Richard points out, that out of nearly 500 staff that would certainly have worked in the War Hospital, we know of only a very few in detail. Yet it gives me hope that these stories are now recorded for future generations; not only so we don't forget the shocking reality of the effects of war, but so we can remember how great, how resilient the human spirit is, and how there truly are those who work tirelessly for the good of others.

UPDATE - website for published book Stories from the War Hospital is at www.firstworldwarhospital.co.uk

If you are interested in obtaining a copy of Stories from the War Hospital please email headingleyhospital@gmail.com .

After the War – the Secret Survival of Gavrilo Princip

Aritha Van Herk with (inset) Gavrilo Princip

Don't miss the finale event of the main programme for 2014:  Aritha Van Herk, award-winning Canadian novelist and critic, will read from her latest work in a new Headingley LitFest partnership event with the Yorkshire Network for Canadian Studies.

Gavrilo Princip (1895 – 1918) was a Serbian nationalist who became the catalyst for the First World War when he assassinated Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, starting a chain reaction which led to the beginning of the war only one month later. So much we know. Or do we? What of Gavrilo? Do we know the truth?

Meet Aritha at Headingley Library on  Monday 7 April. The event starts at 7pm and will be finished by 9pm. For more information contact Catherine Bates: c.bates@hud.ac.uk

Flamenco in Mint Café

Ana Luisa Muñoz

Monday 24 March - partnership event
Mint Café North Lane - Flamenco Diez

Richard Wilcocks writes:
There is a theory that all poets should be able to sing their work - or at least get somebody with a good voice to do it for them. What are a poet's words but notes, and what are notes but an excuse to play music? Didn't Homer and the performers who learned his lines sing about Troy and Odysseus? I bet they didn't clutch little scraps of papyrus in front of them as they mumbled tonelessly! I agreed with everything I've just written on Monday, when I was crammed into Mint Café, which was exotically warm for our gypsy romances and where the thrilling voice of Ana Luisa Muñoz affected everybody so much that they clapped ecstatically.

It was all in Spanish, mind, but that didn't matter in the least. What lyrics, what emotion! Some of those present might have been reminded of  García Lorca, Spain's most revered poet, who was featured in the Headingley LitFest two years ago in both Spanish and English, and who was present again in spirit on Monday - Verde que te quiero verde...

Look out for this group. They are back soon!

A wonderful if sobering event

Mud, Blood and Endless Poetry – Dr Jessica Meyer

House Event – Sunday 23 March

Richard Wilcocks writes:

It was revelatory: few in the audience in my front room knew much, if anything, about the poets who were the focus of  Jessica Meyer’s talk. Wilfred Owen made an appearance, but with the little-known, seldom-analysed The Chances, which was written at Craiglockhart and published posthumously in 1919 in Wheels. Written, as was so often the case, at a time when the literate officer classes tried to adopt the accents of the less-educated horny-handed sons of toil, in a nearly-accurate version of the dialect of working-class London, the poem deals with what was known as shell-shock:

‘E’s wounded, killed, and pris’ner, all the lot –

The ruddy lot all rolled in one. Jim’s mad.

Jessica Meyer knows plenty about shell-shock. Her brilliant, well-researched article on the subject is in the recently-published Stories from the War Hospital (available  from headingleyhospital@gmail.com) in which she makes it clear that she links it with her ongoing research into masculinity in the war.

‘Woodbine Willie’, a padre who originated in Leeds (Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy‘s father was vicar of St Mary’s in Quarry Hill) preferred a similar dialect for To Stretcher Bearers, whose heroic activities are well-documented, incidentally, in Wounded by Emily Mayhew, our guest of last week. Kennedy’s Anglican Christian convictions are made apparent in the final lines of his vivid, dramatic poem:

‘Ere we are, now, stretcher-case, boys,

Bring him aht a cup o’ tea!

Inasmuch as ye have done it

Ye have done it unto Me.

Ewart Alan Mackintosh (killed in action 21 November 1917 aged 24) wrote In Memoriam in something like his own voice, that of a humane, caring officer addressing a father:

Ewart Alan Mackintosh

You were only David’s father,

But I had fifty sons

When we went up in the evening

Under the arch of the guns,

And we came back at twilight –

O God! I heard them call

To me for help and pity

That could not help at all.

I Have a Rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger (yes, there is a link - he was Pete Seeger’s uncle), who died as a member of the French Foreign Legion in the fighting around Verdun, is a poem well-known in the United States, but not here. Procreation, love and happiness is contrasted with death and destruction to great effect by a poet who knew what was surely coming to him:

Alan Seeger

God knows ‘twere better to be deep

Pillowed in silk and scented down,

Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,

Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,

Where hushed awakenings are dear…

But I’ve a rendezvous with Death

At midnight in some flaming town,

When Spring trips north again this year,

And I to my pledged word am true,

I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Ford Madox Ford has come back into fashion, arguably, because of Parade on television, but an excerpt from his Footsloggers, which deals with love of one’s land and our relationship with the State in wartime, was new to all except one in the room. Haunting memories of a particular place which come to an officer in the trenches (a filthy rat-infested ditch) are the subject of From Steyning to the Ring, by Lt. John Purvis, and Simon Armitage deals with the soldiers who survive in his 2008 poem The Not Dead:

We are the not dead.

Neither happy nor proud

with a bar-code of medals across the heart

nor laid in a box and draped with a flag,

we wander this no man’s land instead,

creatures of a different stripe – the awkward, unwanted, unlovable type –

haunted with fears and guilt,

wounded in spirit and mind.

So what shall we do with the not dead and all of his kind?

Simon Currie adds:

I thought you and Jessica Meyer provided a wonderful if sobering event. I read yesterday two of the poems to our Shakespeare-plus-poetry group at Harrogate theatre and the people were bowled over.

Dark Threads

Dark Threads - Jean Davidson
Headingley Oxfam Bookshop - Tuesday 25 March

Gail Alvarez writes:

It is for another to write a fuller account of the excellent evening in Oxfam Books with Jean Davidson talking about her experiences in High Royds, but whilst there I cast my eye along the shelves.

I was struck by the quality of the bang-up-to-date books on show.  We often bemoan the loss of the independent bookshop but we have our own Aladdin’s Cave for the discerning reader right here in the heart of Headingley.  How could I have forgotten?  Do I need to use online searches for my book choices and then one-click to buy them?  No; volunteers will give advice on the backlist of authors or similar books on favourite topics. Fewer visits to the ‘Jungle’ and more to a real bookshop for me!

Expressive intensity

                                                          Photo: Sally Bavage

Guest Poetry Evening - Heart Café

Thursday 7.30pm 20 March

Doug Sandle writes:

The Heart café with daffodils and night light candles on every table was a cosy atmospheric venue for the annual headline guest poetry event of the LitFest. A full house was introduced to Yorkshire poet John Wedgwood Clarke and to the National Poet of Wales, Gillian Clarke. As was remarked – with a LitFest event still to come entitled A Pair of Sandles, we were not expecting also to feature a pair of Clarkes! The event opened with our usual format of a five minute taster from each of our guests – of which Gillian joked that it would give an opportunity for the audience to decide whether to stay or not – but of course after the taster session no-one left and all remained for what was to be an enthralling and intensely evocative evening from two poets whose respect for and craft with language and the expressive intensity of their descriptive and metaphorical use of words was spell binding.

John’s work reflected his interest in sea swimming and the relationship between swimmer and sea and his poetic exploration of the coastal land and sea scape of the East Yorkshire coast.  His careful reading enabled each word, each pause and each phrase to echo with meaning to convey a basic human and yet spiritual encounter with sea, shore and coast and an evocative expression of both a specific and universal sense of place, and of its life and narratives.

Gillian read with an engaging easiness that lulled the listener into an encounter that was an intense expression of her poetic response to nature and landscape (especially that which was winter sharp and ice cold), and the narratives, lives, and events they and their seasons framed. Often intensely descriptive, her poetry’s sensuous and sensory imagery drew us into the deeper resonances of their narratives revealing a very humane respect for and love of life.

Audience Comments

1.     Really good evening as ever – congratulations on organizing these memorable evenings esp. getting Gillian Clarke at such short notice. Candles and flowers, really good atmosphere.

2.     Excellent.

3.     Two fine poets. And HEART did it well.

4.     A first-class event. Both poets were on top form. John Wedgwood Clarke’s command of language is impressive and Gillian’s poetry is lovely, lyrical and full of beautiful imagery.  

5.     Brilliant! These two poets complemented each other perfectly. A rare opportunity to experience famous poets like Gillian Clarke in intimate surroundings – small number audience.

6.     There was a delightfully all-embracing atmosphere. Both poets were outstanding as speakers (vocally) and as communicators. The overall organisation of the event was superb.

7.     Two very different poets. Inspirational, relaxing, & stimulating. A really excellent evening.  

8.     Very entertaining and inspiring.

9.     Good sound system!! Excellent poetry – clear reading!! Welcoming, friendly venue!! Very good!!  

10.  Wonderful – but John Clarke was somewhat overshadowed.

11.  I could listen to Gillian Clarke read and speak all day! I love the format of anecdote and poem, as it (anecdote) adds an extra dimension to the meaning of the poem. Carry on with the poetry please!  

12.  Really good evening – very inspiring.

13.  Excellent evening. Terrific atmosphere created by these two poets. Relaxed and without any kind of poetic pomp, they riveted the audience. Thanks to Headingley LitFest for this event.

14.  J.W.C. enjoyed poems. Would have liked 15 mins for questions to learn more. G.C. – generous sharing of the back-stories of her poems. Gentle humour. Wonderful poetry. More!  

15.  Thoroughly enjoyed both. A brief question and answer session with each would have been great.

16.  Such a privilege to be in the company of such an amazing woman.

17.  John was a good choice for a Leeds audience – we recognised so much of the area and empathized with his emotions. Gillian’s poetry was sensual and almost mythical. An inspirational evening!

18.  Really good quality poetry and well read, with two important poets. Nicely compèred by Sheila and Doug, and the length of the evening was just right.

19.  I thought that both poets were very good and I particularly enjoyed John’s coastal poetry.

20.  Fab readings. (Fridges a bit noisy). Great opportunity to hear memorable words.  

21.  Very special and evocative.

22.  Nice balance between the two poets – good to have a regional voice as well as a ‘national’ poet – both very good. Nice relaxed atmosphere – and great that it cost only £6 – very good value.

23.  A privilege to hear two poets of such quality in one evening. Well done to the Headingley LitFest for getting them to read their work.

24.  Delightful evening! What a privilege to hear Gillian Clarke – a real coup for the LitFest to bring her to Leeds.

25.  Enjoyed both poets very much. So evocative of place and memory. Made me want to experience those places. I have experienced them through their words

26.  1. Lovely venue – warm, relaxing, comfortable with welcome refreshments available. 2. Successful structure – nice introductions, and a welcome interval. 3. Good speakers – Gillian Clarke was exceptional. I would like to have a hug from her one day. 

A friendly and conversational tone

Wednesday Evening 19 March –HEART

Helen Burke – Leeds Combined Arts partnership event.

Doug Sandle writes:

Leeds Combined Arts was formed in 2006 and organises monthly poetry readings, arts events and projects. Founded in the former old Headingley Community Centre its monthly meetings now take place at HEART. The main aims of LCA is ‘to provide workshops and events in schools, theatres, local community centres and other organisations and to encourage and create opportunities for members and the wider community to participate in a variety of arts related events and activities’. LCA has regularly held partnership events with the Headingley LitFest and this year the writer, performer, artist and poet Helen Burke was featured reading her own poetry.

As well as providing a colourful display of her own expressive art work and original textile designs, Helen delivered her poetry within a friendly and  conversational tone that is both intimate and accessible and which, perhaps paradoxically, added to its emotional potency and expressive intensity. As feedback from the attentive audience confirmed, her work, which draws upon her own personal experiences and encounters, is “thoughtful, thought provoking and moving” and evidence of a “wonderful imagination”. Her work can also be engagingly humorous - as with her popular poem about a French cat encountered in Paris that is cleverly observed and amusingly characterised much to the delight of the audience. 

Helen’s impact was summed up by the feedback comment of one audience member who in describing it as an ‘excellent performance’, tellingly revealed that he/she ‘had never been to a poetry reading before and really enjoyed it’ - now that’s just the kind of response that Headingley LitFest finds very gratifying – so thanks to Leeds Combined Arts and to Helen for a memorable evening.

Audience comments:

1.     Excellent event. Entertaining. Intelligent. So much so that Helen is booked to appear at ‘Poetry by Heart (in partnership with HLF) in March 201.

2.      Excellent event. Very entertaining poems. Lovely evening.

3.     Loved every word. This is the second time I’ve seen Helen perform now; I am a big fan of her poetry.  

4.     Very lively. Entertaining. An excellent human being of great humour & powers of insight.

5.     Enjoyable evening in a friendly comfortable atmosphere.

6.     Helen has some very unusual poetry, some very thought provoking. 

7.     Wonder food for the soul.

8.     As always, Helen’s work is thoughtful, thought provoking, funny and moving. A wonderful imagination – lovely to have the chance to hear her in solo performance.

9.     Good event, right-sized room. Interesting mix of poetry & paintings/prints/textiles, verbal and visual. Good to have short tea break.

10.  The LitFest as a whole has been great so far, and I especially enjoyed Helen Burke’s reading at the LCA event.

11.  Excellent performance. Just the right length. Have never been to a poetry reading before & really enjoyed.

12.  A very enjoyable evening.

13.  Totally amazing.

14.  Very good poet reading some very interesting and funny poetry as well.

15.  Very entertaining and good fun. Excellent performance from Helen.  

16.  The length of the programme felt just right, and Helen’s poetry was great, and well defined between the interval.  

17.  Great. Engrossing. Captivating. 

The way theatre should be

Echoes of War - partnership event with Theatre of the Dales

Saturday 22 March 7.30 pm

New Headingley Club

Sally Bavage writes, with help from audience commentary:

Stuart Fortey

I first started to write this blog after coming home from a wonderful evening of thought-provoking drama, but realised that I had so many images and lines swirling in my brain that it was far better to write after reflection.  These two plays, scripted by our local gifted playwrights Stuart Fortey (On Scarborough Front) and Peter Spafford (The Edge of the Forest), were wonderful, engaging stories, [which] drew me in and made me want to know more/wonder what happened next.  Me too.

Three actors play in two time frames with one theme – the dilemma of how to find what you value in yourself.  In the first play, a shell-shocked Wilfred Owen eventually volunteers to go back to the front; he sees writing as an act of atonement and knew that he needed to overcome his reputation of cowardice in order to give his work weight and credence. The work lives on, of course; he didn’t and his parents received his death notice on November 11^th, 1918.  Poetic.  The second play, a longer and more complex piece, has a character called Robert, a disturbing and destabilising influence on those around him, who is both a rather unctuous modern estate agent chasing a sale from a pair of siblings and Robert Frost the American poet who influences Edward Thomas, at 37 approaching middle age, to volunteer and leave his wife and three children. Both Roberts see words and images as means to an end – their end – and it is the Roberts who survive. Did Owen really want to use the front line as inspiration for his poetry?  Did a depressed and doomed Thomas go to war because he was bored?  

Peter Spafford

On Scarborough Front was a gripping two-hander with Stuart Fortey, both scriptwriter and Lieutenant-Colonel Gray, and Will Rastall as the gifted but tortured Wilfred Owen.  Gripping...  Spellbinding... (that word again). Powerful... Highly imaginative... The audience were glad of the interval to gather their thoughts and emotions for the second half.

The Edge of the Forest was written and performed by Peter Spafford, who plays Mev/Edward Thomas.  It allows Beth Kilburn as Beth/Helen Thomas to once again display her range for sympathetic characterisation and sublety.  Will Rastall plays Robert/Robert Frost with beguiling charm that segues into mind-game manipulation. 

Afterwards, the audience lingered long to discuss and savour the nuances of plot and character with the cast and each other, belatedly filing out into the cold evening exuding much warmth for the acting and the superb quality of the drama to which they had borne witness.  As one audience member commented: I had thought - £6 for some amateur thing!  Not sure I’ll come - but was worth every penny; the stories will stay with me.  Will tell friends about it – so glad all this is on my doorstep!

Beth Kilburn

Our thanks are due to the New Headingley Club for allowing us such generous rehearsal time, to volunteer Tom Stanley from Leeds University who came along to help with the organisation and, of course, to the Theatre of the Dales who once again provided new work for Headingley LitFest of such high quality. For more information visit www.theatreofthedales.co.uk1 or ring David Robertson on 2740461.

Other audience comments – from many all so very positive - include:

Great to have two splendid but very different local playwrights in action being heard.  An excellent programme, beautifully performed.  Well worth putting on and much more important than merely a Headingley triumph.

A complex play despite the small cast which skilfully switched between characters very well.

Absolutely riveting, powerful performances and very moving.

A brilliant moving evocation of the effects of war.

I was enormously impressed by the quality of the writing and acting – this was my first LitFest event.  I will certainly come to more.

Two very different plays, both highly imaginative and very interesting ‘takes’ on a familiar subject. Great acting made for an excellent evening.

It is still very relevant to question what ties us emotionally to place and time, and whether war is an effective way of resolving differences.  Unfortunately, the question has to be asked by both sides to a dispute.

Brilliant, engrossing from the start.  The way theatre should be.  Skilled and audible.

An evening which deserves to be repeated many times during this year of commemoration.

Each play was spellbinding – each powerful with its own essence.  Authentic is the word that comes up immediately after they aired.  A sense of depth and experience that shakes me – they each hold the reality of the effect of war.  I know more about it now – even though I thought I did before.

All the right funny voices

Ridiculous Witches - Sarah Shafi
Headingley Library - 11am Saturday 22 March

It was just the right size of audience for a reading of the latest in the Ridiculous Witches series by local children's author Sarah Shafi, thirty people including parents. The children showed great interest and enthusiasm as the author adopted all the right funny voices for The Odd-legged Crashing Witch of Leeds and showed the startlingly brilliant illustrations by Tony Husband, though you would have needed brilliant eyesight to see them from afar. No matter, most of the audience seems to have become equipped with a personal copy at the end of the session.

Stories from the War Hospital - the play

Stories from the War Hospital - the play
Friday 21 March, 7.30 pm New Headingley Club

An intimate and moving evocation of the suffering and courage

                            Charlotte Blackburn, Richard Wilcocks, Katharina Arnold, Hannah Robinson                 Photo: Lloyd Spencer

Gail Alvarez writes:

I was frankly amazed that they managed to hold the seventy-strong audience spellbound for sixty minutes during a very imaginative, innovative performance which brought the personal (and true) stories to life. It was indeed a very special experience.  

These are just three of the many outstanding comments on the presentation accompanying the launch of Stories from the War Hospital researched by Richard Wilcocks, Secretary of Headingley LitFest, with the support of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, over the past year and a half.

Nurses and volunteers, Royal Army Medical Corps, bereaved parents, casualty clearing station staff, soldiers wounded by shot, shell and gas, stretcher bearers, maids and uniform makers … we had them all on stage by turns in an imaginative production that used effective, minimal props but maximum talent for an intimate and moving evocation of the suffering and courage.  The book gives many more stories and much more detail, including the Vedettes on p145. 

Three very talented young performers from LeedsMet – The Vedettes - supported the dramatic representation of just three of the many local stories that Richard has brought to life in script, show and book.  

Katharina Arnold, from Vienna, whose first language is German, was perfectly cast as Dorothy Wilkinson, the musical daughter of a German mother and an English father. 

Charlotte Blackburn was the impressively strict Matron Euphemia Innes and Nurse Margaret Anna Newbould as well as the seamstress Ada who marries Private Robert Bass, a lucky recipient of pioneering maxillofacial surgery. 

Hannah Robinson movingly played the lucky Robert as well as the less-fortunate Captain Clifford Pickles.  

Richard himself, like the Vedettes, skilfully took on a number of roles - Lt Col Harry Littlewood, a vicar, the musician Charles Wilkinson, a maxillofacial surgeon - that kept the pace and the stories flowing.  

Conrad Beck writes:

I have never before seen the concert room of the New Headingley Club so well set up for a performance, with a wooden apron stage erected in the middle of one of the long sides, backed by hessian-draped flats, and a really professional lighting rig. Richard Wilcocks, who wrote the book which was being launched, provided us with a kind of entertaining prologue in which he outlined the research which has taken place over the period of about eighteen months, and read for us one of the briefer articles - Help! Help, it's cold! - which was taken from a 1916 issue of the British Journal of Nursing. This made people laugh and put them in a good mood for the show, which began soon afterwords with guitar music from Katharina Arnold with a hint of melancholy in it.

The hour-long play which followed gripped the audience throughout. The action in it takes place at the Second Northern General Hospital at Beckett Park, at the Boston Spa home of Dorothy Wilkinson, at a suffragette rally, at a musical evening in Leeds, at the Second Battle of Ypres, at various Casualty Clearing Stations, in St Chad's Church, Headingley, on the Hospital Ship Formosa and at the Battle of Arras. We got all that, very convincingly, in just over an hour of performance. 

All the actors were strong: Katharina Arnold had a powerful stage presence as Dorothy Wilkinson, the suffragette daughter of a musician, Hannah Robinson was particularly effective when she played the spectre of the dead, shell-shocked Captain Pickles and Charlotte Blackburn was the perfect matron: I was really moved when she told us about the tragic cases she had helped to treat after the Gallipoli battles. Richard Wilcocks, the author on stage, was obviously born to be a lieutenant-colonel in the RAMC.

I would love to see this little theatre group again in the future, and I do hope that they will put on Stories from the War Hospital for at least a second time. I am wondering whether they will be performing it in the hospital itself - that is, in the Headingley Campus of Leeds Metropolitan University. I do hope they have been invited.

For a copy of the book: headingleyhospital@gmail.com

For the website: CLICK HERE

Cast: 

Katharina Arnold - Guitarist, vedette, staff nurse, Dorothy Wilkinson, cloud of chlorine, nurse at Casualty Clearing Station and on hospital ship, stretcher-bearer, Emma.

 Charlotte Blackburn - Matron-in-Chief Euphemia Innes, vedette, staff nurse, Gladys Keevil, gassed soldier, nurse at Casualty Clearing Station, stretcher-bearer, Vincent Boy, Margaret Anna Newbould, sergeant, stretcher-bearer, Ada.

 Hannah Robinson - Vedette, maid, suffragette, Captain Clifford Pickles RAMC, Vincent Boy, nurse at Casualty Clearing Station and on hospital ship, Private Robert Bass

Richard Wilcocks - Lt Col Harry Littlewood, vicar, Charles Wilkinson, bereaved parent, officer in trench, maxillofacial surgeon.

Director/Script - Richard Wilcocks

Stage Management/Lighting - Matthew Sykes-Hooban

Poems used:

Schtzngrmm is by the Austrian ‘concrete poet’ (Lautgedichte) Ernst Jandl.

Pluck is by VAD nurse and poet Eva Dobell.

There Will Come Soft Rains is by the American lyric poet Sara Teasdale.

Dedicated to the RAMC is by the ‘Pack Store Party’ and appeared in the Journal of the Leeds Territorial Hospitals in December 1917.

Thanks to Performing Arts at LMU for making rehearsal spaces available. Special thanks to Oliver Bray.

Audience comments:

Spellbinding show that revisits the time of the wounded and nursing services in the Great War.

Excellent presentation, skilled acting and very moving.  Thank you.

A very imaginative, innovative performance which brought the personal stories to life – moving and touching.  Admirable lively acting, beautifully rehearsed and staged.  A very special experience.

I believe that the piece was very good, especially I like the way of representing the stories by various ways and techniques.  Thank you.

Great performances from Leeds Met students.

Often poignant and moving.  Extremely well acted and mostly well articulated.  Not always easy to follow the transitions between people and phases but a very well worthwhile experience.

For just four actors, amateurs at that, to sustain interest in, and convey the many varied emotions involved in telling the complex story of a war hospital, with humour and without any props, was a remarkable challenge but one which they successfully pulled off without noticeable flaw.  I was frankly amazed that they managed to hold the audience spellbound for sixty minutes.

Very moving and interesting personal stories.

I particularly liked the use of a hospital clipboard, which enabled extracts from letters, newspaper clippings and other items to be read out with style.

A great performance and very insightful.  I didn’t know about Beckett Park Hospital and I am so grateful that Richard has worked so hard to research this past that definitely shouldn’t ever be forgotten.

Very well performed play.  A brilliant glimpse of what will be a great read.  Well done Richard!

Thank you for a moving performance with excellent music and songs.

The set - just folds of sacking at the back of the stage and a red-painted chair - looked great before the show even started.

What an amazing amount of detail to remember!  Very powerful drama, told through the eyes of people who did experience WW1.  I had three great uncles who were killed between 1916 and 1917 (one on the Somme) a grandfather who was a patient at Beckett Park and I studied there (1979-83) so found the performance very interesting and informative.

Wonderful!  Very absorbing, moving with a touch of humour

Sterling work!  The ensemble really brought the stories to life and provided a reminder of the work done by so many ordinary staff during the war.  A really enjoyable evening.

A vivid reproduction of three true stories of hospital life in WW1.  A wonderful acting quartet – look forward to seeing them again.

An intimate and moving evocation of the suffering and courage.  Many thanks

Enterprising interpretation of some very interesting material.

Fascinating stories and imaginative lovely performance.  Beautiful singing voices.

Very interesting event.  Acting and singing was a joy.  Mix of humour and tragedy.  Very enjoyable evening.

Very good group effort managing to convey the horror of the war but also moving and humorous at times.   I like the music and movement, well done!

Spirited performance. Hope it will be retold elsewhere after all the work that’s gone into it.

Had heard a little about the hospital and stories before from Richard.  The performance really brought it to life, both the ordinary and the extraordinary and tragic.  Very interesting and well done.

I attended CL&CC 74 to 77 and was aware of the history of the college whilst training as a teacher, hence my interest in coming tonight.  Well researched  rehearsed and performed play – very informative.

Very well acted throughout.  Very moving in parts.

Nurses who 'did their bit' should be fully remembered and not taken for granted. I am a nurse, so I felt really involved in this terrific play! Well done Vedettes!