The Night Watch Review

Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford – until 28th September 2019, and touring

Reviewed by Antonia Hebbert

3***

This play is an unusually dark take on Britain in the 1940s. We’re used to celebrations of plucky Blitz spirit, but The Night Watch reminds us that people also experienced fear and insecurity, not to mention the everyday dreariness of things like rationing. It’s based on Sarah Waters’ novel of the same name (shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2006), and the stage adaptation is by Hattie Naylor.

Like the novel, the play starts in 1947. The bombing is over, but London has yet to be rebuilt, as have the lives of the characters. Kay (Phoebe Pryce) is a sort of living ghost, trying to piece back the bits of her life – a ring that she lent a stranger, memories of a lover, and a lost sense of purpose. Duncan (excellent Lewis Mackinnon) appears broken by years in prison as a conscientious objector. Other characters – fractious couple Helen and Julia, Duncan’s cellmate and his sister, the odd old man he lives with and a faith healer – link them together. By the end of the first part of the play, Kay and Duncan have both, possibly, found the beginnings of redemption.

The second half goes back through the war years, and fills in the gaps. A bright dance routine is effective shorthand for the way the war shook up society and freed some people from the old conventions. We see Kay as a brave and admired air-raid (ARP) warden, but we also see Duncan’s horror at being dragged into this ‘old man’s war’ that seems to him to have no purpose. The lesbian love triangle of Kay, Helen and Julia is a crucial part of the story, but is oddly unelectrifying. They just don’t tug on the heartstrings in the way that Duncan does, perhaps because he seems so raw, while the women are restrained, and indeed plucky. Malcolm James treads an interesting line as Mr Mundy, both creepy and humane.

Everything is played out in a dark, rubble-heaped set with the shell of a house looming behind. It’s an atmospheric and interesting play, and worth seeing for its unusual approach to Britain at war. I have to confess I’ve missed this book by Sarah Waters (I have enjoyed others), but will definitely get hold of it now