Private Peaceful is such a poetic name for a soldier that it could only have sprung from the mind of a writer, right? But children’s author Michael Morpurgo can’t take credit for the military moniker. His wife spotted it on a gravestone in a Commonwealth War Grave cemetery near Ypres, Belgium: Private T.S.H. Peaceful Royal Fusiliers 4th June 1915.
“I was…intent on writing a novel about one of the soldiers who had been executed for cowardice or desertion during the First World War,” writes Morpurgo (War Horse) in the author’s note to his 2003 novel Private Peaceful. “I knew at once that Peaceful had to be the name of my soldier.”
It’s an appropriately evocative name, and title, for Morpurgo’s tale, which has evolved from a book to a movie and, finally, to a play: a taut, tension-filled 85-minute one-man telling now at off-Broadway’s TBG Main Stage Theatre.
I haven’t seen the 2012 film—which marked the late Richard Griffiths’ final performance—but I’ll wager that this solo show, performed with great heart and ferocity by Shane O’Regan, is far more compelling. (Both were adapted by Simon Reade, who also directs here.)
O’Regan plays soon-to-be-fallen-soldier Tommo Peaceful, future private in the British Army and devoted younger brother to Charlie. O’Regan also plays Charlie; Molly, the girl with plaits whom both brothers both love; an imposing sergeant major (a snippet of his recruitment speech: “The Germans will be here, right on your doorstep. They’ll come marching through your houses, violating your women, killing your children.… And remember one thing lads—and I can vouch for this—all the ladies love a soldier”); Jimmy Parsons, the sneering school bully; Sergeant Hanley, the sneering battlefield bully; and many more colorful characters—some two dozen in all. He’s afforded no costume changes, unless donning and doffing a helmet counts (it doesn’t). The set is similarly sparse; a bed handily doubles as a trench. All of the detail—and there’s a surprising amount packed into such a lean production—comes from Morpurgo’s story, Reade’s script, and O’Regan’s finely shaded characterizations. Though credit must be given to sound designer Jason Barnes, who has produced a startling array of almost symphonic bursts of gunfire and explosions.
Surprisingly, Private Peaceful isn’t entirely a war story. In fact, Tommo and Charlie don’t enlist until about halfway through. It’s largely Tommo’s coming-of-age tale, chronicling pivotal events such as the first day of school (“Charlie sees my eyes full of tears and knows how it is”), their father’s funeral (“We’ve never in our lives sat in the front row before”), Molly and Charlie’s love affair (“The two people I loved most in all the world who, in finding each other, had deserted me”), his resolution to join the army though he wasn’t yet 16 (“I loved what I knew: and what I knew was my family, and Molly, and the countryside I’d grown up in. I would do all I could to protect the people I loved. And I would do it with Charlie”).
It’s heartbreaking that Tommo’s pure-hearted devotion to Charlie, both as his brother and his fellow soldier, could lead to his demise. Yet during World War I hundreds of British soldiers lost their lives similarly—quietly court-martialed and summarily executed by firing squad. Suddenly the Private in Private Peaceful takes on a distressing double meaning.
Private Peaceful opened Sept. 6, 2018, and runs through Oct. 7 at the TBG Main Stage Theatre. Tickets and information: privatepeacefulusa.com
