Since my last note, about Far, Far From Ypres, I’ve seen a couple of reviews of the show which criticise it for similar, though distinct, reasons. In one case the criticism was that there didn’t seem to be an organising ‘message’ around which the show was themed. The second criticism concerned an absence of ‘theatricality’ in the production.

I can see the point of both criticisms which are well argued but I agree with neither.

The audience did not and does not require to be told what to think and, in the case of WW1, being told what to think has become endemic. There are a number of embedded narratives about WW1 and it is wise to exercise a critical intelligence with regard to all of them. The strength of Far, Far From Ypres is that, in the main, it left didacticism at home. It presented a number of voices and left the audience to reach its own conclusions. To include Music Hall and populist songs of the period was not to deploy imperialist tub-thumping propaganda but a proper reflection of the times in which songs of the trenches and songs on the home-front co-existed. Neither tells a complete story and the juxtaposition of them is a lot more interesting than a partial selection. A ‘message’ would be to impose an interpretation on something which, in the final analysis, defies simple interpretation.

And there were inconvenient facts lurking in the narrative too. The songs from the trenches mock officers and yet, as the script also notes, the life expectancy of a junior officer at the front was less than six weeks. Should we ‘honour’ the evisceration of a Private by whizzbang shrapnel and close our eyes to the machine-gunning of a nineteen year old NCO? Did the parents of one grieve any less than the parents of the other? Was the pain of one set of siblings and sweethearts of lesser consequence?

There is a particularly strong narrative in the West of Scotland around Red Clydeside which is an important story that must be told. But at the same time as those events were unfolding, thousands of Scots were fighting and dying in the trenches. I make no argument in favour of patriotic fervour or jingoism, and no-one who knows me would suspect that; but neither will I try to ignore it and pretend that it was of no consequence. It is not a matter of either/or but of both. That is the difference between history and polemic and it is why Far, Far From Ypres did not require a didactic ‘message’.

Perhaps it is because I’m an old folkie at heart that the lack of ‘theatricality’ didn’t bother me. Properly delivered, which they were, the songs do the work for you. At Buchanan Street bus station on the way home a party of pensioners who had been at the show were boarding the same bus as us. The women were commenting on the state of their make-up because the performance had moved them to tears. The men tried hard to look stoical. I have seen more theatrical events achieve less in the way of impact.