All Quiet on the Western Front
VAULT Festival, Crescent – The Vaults, Waterloo, SE1 7NN
Tuesday 3rd – Sunday 8th March 2020
“We were eighteen years old, and just learning to love the world and being in it, and then we had to shoot it to bits.”
Following an international tour, the multi-award nominated and award winning Incognito Theatre Company returns to VAULT Festival with their critically celebrated sell-out adaptation of Erich Remarque’s tale, All Quiet on the Western Front, which delves into the harrowing reality of trench warfare in the First World War.
A group of young friends voluntarily join the German army, with their hearts fuelled by driving patriotism and youthful naivety. But after training is over and the threat of the front looms, these young men soon realise that the ideals of national glory are nothing more than empty echoes, drowned out by the sound of bombs and raining shrapnel. In a world wrought with pain and suffering, the boy soldiers desperately cling onto the camaraderie between them, which has become their only source of hope.
This thrilling adaptation is gripping and unyielding in its treatment of the visceral reality of war. With a focus on the vulnerability of human experience, merged with Incognito Theatre’s unapologetically explosive physical style, All Quiet on the Western Front highlights the punishing conditions and disorientating chaos of this violent world. Exploring raw humanity and the power of brotherhood in the face of total bleakness, Incognito’s adaptation exposes the personal sacrifices that were made for the sake of the Great War.
With the centenary of the end of WWI in 2018, the 75th anniversary of D-day commemorated in June 2019 and VE Day approaching on the 8th May 2020, All Quiet on the Western Front is as important to perform now as it was in its debut in Remembrance of troops’ suffering, and the exposition of the mindlessness of war is as poignant as ever. Told from the perspective of German forces, Incognito’s refusal to shy away from the emotional turmoil of the boys that went off to fight allows an audience to experience how people struggle to cling to hope and to each other when faced with unerring destruction. Incognito’s unique theatrical bombast will confront and transport an audience for 60 minutes. It is entertainment and it is educational.
Writer and performer Charlie MacVicar comments, Incognito Theatre Company’s adaptation of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ was developed in 2016, as remembrance for World War One permeated public consciousness more than ever before. The centenary of the Battle of the Somme and many other major WWI events inspired us to investigate the lives of the men who served on the front line. Erich Maria Remarque’s heart wrenching and widely loved novel offered the perfect framework for us to investigate the shocking pain and the beauty of the friendships formed by those who fought in a war which was vaster and further flung than anything the world had ever seen.
★★★★★
“Enthralling, moving and fundamentally, beautifully human.”
ThreeWeeks
★★★★★
“Skilfully directed by Roberta Zuric, this production should be at the very top of your must-see list and richly deserved the standing ovation… Kill for a ticket.”
British Theatre Guide