✭✭✭✭✩

by Owen Sheers, directed by Stephen Rayne

Garry McQuinn & Amanda Faber, Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto

February 26-March 9, 2014

“This is where war happens. On the bodies of men”

The Two Worlds of Charlie F. is a brave and powerful piece of documentary theatre about what it is like to be a Western soldier in Afghanistan.  The work was conceived in 2010 by producer Alice Driver as the first theatre project in the UK where wounded, injured and sick Service personnel could tell their own stories on stage.  The premiere in London met with huge success and the piece went on tour throughout the UK.  The present opening in Toronto marks the beginning of a second tour.  While the instructive aspect of the work is foremost, playwright Owen Sheers and director Stephen Rayne have lent the real experiences and thoughts of real soldiers as much theatricality as possible without sentimentalizing of sensationalizing what these people have endured.

Charlie F. manages to avoid all the clichés of war drama by focussing not the reasons for war, valid or not, or on media coverage of war, biased or not, but rather on the personal impact fighting in war has on individuals.  The standpoint of the work is “War happens.  This is what happens to the people involved in it”.  The central figure of the piece who often functions as a narrator is the fictional Charlie Fowler, played by real Marine Cassidy Little who served with 42 Commando, RM, Bickleigh Barracks, Plymouth, and was injured by an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) in 2011on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. 

(Such homemade bombs as IEDs have so far caused 66% of Coalition causalities in Afghanistan.)  His injury required the amputation of his lower right leg.  The unexpected Canadian connection in the play is that Marine Little was born in Ottawa and raised in Newfoundland.  He is one of eight current and former Service personnel who act in the piece alongside seven stage actors.  Little’s strong stage presence, sassiness and sense of irony inform every aspect of the production.     

We first meet Charlie F. when he wakes up delirious and hysterical in a hospital in the UK, unable to recognize either his fiancée (actor Lily Phillips) or his mother (actor Miriam Cooper).  This unsettling opening scene makes the point that the rest of the show will examine – soldiers may return alive from a war zone like Afghanistan but the experience permanently marked them physically as well as mentally.  The work’s notion of “two worlds” has many meanings – civilian versus military life, one’s home country versus Afghanistan – but in Charlie F. it primarily designates two worlds of struggle.  Act 1 focusses on the first world, the entry into the military and terrors of life in a war zone.  Act 2 focusses on the second world, the entry to a rehabilitation centre and the fears of never being able to reintegrate with ordinary society again.  The fact that Owen Sheers devotes an act to each shows how different this piece is from other war dramas since he demonstrates that soldiers require as much bravery and inner strength to re-enter civilian life as they do to fight.  Countless films glorify or malign the former while paying little or no attention to the latter.  The greatest lesson we learn from Charlie F. is to grant greater respect to the struggles soldiers face in both worlds.   

The play is filled with fascinating stories.  In the section where the group tell why they joined the military, Lance Corporal (Retd) Maurillia Simpson playing Lance Corporal Simi Yates, a version of herself, says that she was inspired by Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Trinidad and told her mother, much to her mother’s amusement, when she was seven “one day I will be a soldier and live where the Queen lives”.  Yet, that’s what she did.

Rifleman (Retd) Daniel Shaw playing Rifleman Leroy Jenkins, also a version of himself, describes what it was like to lose both legs to an IED.  He was so deleterious from the shock and morphine that when the second of his legs fell off and he asked for it back, he thought the ordinary stick the medics gave him to hold was his leg.  Colour Sargent Darren Swift, playing Colour Sergeant Chris Ward, a version of himself, who also lost both legs, describes the pain of phantom leg syndrome far more vividly that I’ve ever heard before.

The are certain aspects of being an amputee that an audience might find disturbing such as the discussion Rifleman Leroy Jenkins and Marine Charlie Fowler have about offers to appear in porn from producers catering to a niche group.  Jenkins and Fowler also have a playful discussion comparing what their stumps look like.  These kinds of scenes demonstrate both how the amputees cope with their condition and how they have a perspective on it that most of the audience do not. 

Similarly in a barracks scene actor Tom Colley playing Sapper John Booth receives a “Dear John” letter from his girlfriend who can’t cope with the stress of their separation any longer.  This is a fairly conventional scene from plays and films about war.  Surprising, however, is when one of the men receives a quota of porn from his girlfriend who understands he needs it to help him get through their separation.  Later, at a recuperation hospital at Headley Court in Surrey, the men have to erase the porn from a DVD one of their dead comrades made before they hand it over to his grieving mother. 

The injuries are not all, of course, so obviously physical as amputations.  Lieutenant Colonel (Retd) Stewart Hill, playing play Major Daniel Thomas, a version of himself, describes how shrapnel from an IED gave him a head injury that has impaired the executive function, or decision-making area, of his brain.  He reflects that he used to command groups of men, but now he can’t command his own body.

The most graphic description of what happens when a soldier is near an IED when it explodes occurs during the scene when the soldiers receive a field medic course.  Actor Owen Oldroyd as Captain David Phillips has Sapper John Booth undress and draws on his very fit body the multiple places where an IED can cause injury.  After a detail of information from head to foot, the answer is clearly everywhere.  As Booth observes, “This is where war happens. On the bodies of men”. 

Charlie Fowler describes how tours of duty in Afghanistan have changed, how in later tours they were no longer fighting just soldiers but women and children with high-powered weapons, and the moral disorientation that follows from having to decide whether or not to kill a child who is trying to kill you.  The odds on death or injury also changed.  Charlie says that later, “It’s not a question of if anymore, but when”.

Director Stephen Rayne helps relieve the tension of the soldiers’ tales with interludes of song and dance.  Some are upbeat like the men and women receiving physiotherapy exercising to Daft Punk’s “Around the World”.  Others are quite moving such as the piece choreographed by Lily Phillips for Charlie, Jenkins and Ward in their wheelchairs and three female actor/dancers to demonstrate the possibility of uniting those with different abilities in a common pursuit.

That, indeed, is the overarching goal of Charlie F.  The piece deliberately thwarts any feelings of pity we may have for the injured on stage, since pity is an unhelpful emotion and demeaning to those injured.  Instead, Charlie F. fosters a greater realization of the dual struggles military personnel face, first abroad, then at home, and seeks to make us realize that the second is as important as the first.  No matter what your politics you can’t help but respect all those involved in creating the show and their efforts to honour the dignity of their comrades.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) The cast of The Two Worlds of Charlie F.; Cassidy Little as Charlie Fowler; Owen Oldroyd and Tom Colley. ©2014 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.