Based on Le Soldat Inconnu Vivant by Jean-Yves Le Naour (Hachete Litterature 2002) 12th February - 15th March 2008 Arcola Theatre Studio 1 A man that can’t remember. A nation that can’t forget. France, 1918. A soldier is found wandering a station platform. With no knowledge of his identity, or the country he has been defending, he is saved from death but exiled from life. What follows is a war story, a ghost story, an absurd comedy and a chilling tragedy in which the ensemble rise from a no-man's land of This groundbreaking production is pioneering new ways of theatre making, using a hydrogen fuel cell to power the production and working closely with Arcola Energy to try and create ecologically sustainable production processes.
The Living Unknown Soldier
Devised by Simple 8, inspired by a true story.
mud to imagine and remember the life of the living unknown soldier.
Simple8 was formed in June 2003 by eight professional actors, writers and directors. We decided to take control of our own creative work and combine our talents to take drama in a direction we believe in. That is, towards innovative, original productions which have at their core an emphasis on the ensemble, while allowing the narrative, the characters and above all, the story to dictate the style of the piece. Simplicity, truth and the collective are our reference points. We want to produce simple stories, simply told. We are very grateful for above image, which comes from the Imperial War Museum's huge collections, which cover all aspects of conflict involving Britain and the Commonwealth since the start of the twentieth century. Imperial War Museum The Royal British Legion provides financial, social and emotional support to millions who have served and are currently serving in the Armed Forces, and their dependants. Nearly 10.5 million people are eligible for their support and they receive thousands of calls for help every year. Reviews
Time Out - Critics’ Choice ****
There can be few plays in which you learn as little about the main protagonist as in ‘The Living Unknown Soldier’. There’s a good reason for that: namely, the ‘hero’, a French soldier returning from the front in 1918, has lost his memory and remains ‘trapped in a no-man’s-land between life and death’, shorn of both name and personal history. As time goes on – the passing years are chalked up on a war memorial at the back of the playing space – a parade of would-be friends and family members lay claim to him. ‘I’m like an innocent you’re all trying to pin a crime on,’ exclaims the largely silent character – variously referred to as Albert/ Anthelme Mangin/Monjoin – who sits at the shadowy heart of this true story.
The opening scene, in which the doctor responsible for Albert/ Anthelme delivers a short but eloquent lecture on the fine line that separates imagination from memory, is reminiscent of Complicite’s ‘Mnemonic’. Simple8 director Sebastian Armes displays plenty of invention and flair, delivering a fluid spectacle that poignantly evokes the lasting and universal traumas of war.
It’s not perfect. The early asylum sequences could do with a little tightening, and then there’s the inherent dramatic problem posed by having a hero who has no name or detectable personality. It’s a difficulty that’s further aggravated here by the decision to have Albert/Anthelme played by different actors. But that doesn’t stop this from being one show about amnesia that’s paradoxically highly memorable.
by Robert Shore
Evening Standard - Glorious Undead ***
It is an intriguing and unsettling idea. Why must all unknown soldiers be dead? Why couldn't a combatant return from war physically but not mentally, and then spend the rest of his life trying to rebuild a fractured identity?
Using the book by Jean-Yves Le Naour as inspiration, vibrant young company Simple8 have concocted a drama about just such a soldier who arrives demobbed and amnesic at a French railway station in 1918.
Multiple actors play the virtually silent central character, a device that perfectly suggests a blank canvas onto which the world can project its own expectations. Endless families come forward to claim the soldier - the repetitiveness of which can't help becoming cumbersome to Sebastian Armesto's production - whose humanity crumbles a little more each time he is gawped at and argued over.
Still, assured turns from the eight-strong ensemble, including Tom Mison as an amusingly insouciant journalist, keep us focused on this quiet casualty.
by Fiona Mountford
The Independent ***
An arrestingly fresh angle on familiar territory is also granted in the new show at the Arcola, presented by the imaginative Simple8 company. It's usually taken for granted that an "unknown soldier" is a dead soldier. What, though, if a combatant were to return from the front physically alive but "unknown" in the sense of being mentally oblivious of his past life and his identity? Conceived by the director, Sebastian Armesto, and based on a book by the historian Jean-Yves Le Naour, The Living Unknown Soldier takes its cue from the true story of an amnesiac French soldier in a psychological limbo at the end of the Great War.
Languishing in an asylum, he is claimed by hundreds of French families as their missing relative for a variety of reasons ranging from the crudely financial to the painfully emotional. The eight-strong company endlessly role-swap as this piteous, largely silent figure sits centre stage and is bombarded by the jabber of competing allegations. It's a device that eloquently communicates how he becomes a blank screen on which the world projects its own priorities.
Tom Mison is dashingly droll as the journalist who turns the unknown soldier into a careerist campaign, and then, having shown no interest in the truth, comes close to identifying him. And Tony Guilfoyle is excellent as the doctor who looks after this patient through years that are chalked up like a prison sentence until, with bitter irony, the German army in the Second World War starve the soldier and his fellow inmates to death. Recommended.
by Paul Taylor