Originally it was going to be Twelfth Night. Instead Sam Mendes marks his theatrical return by directing a new play by Nick Whitby about the first world war. Given the subject, it can hardly fail to move. But the evening, in its precise casting, command of mood and gradual accumulation of suspense, also reminds us why Mendes really is a great director.
The setting is France in 1918. The characters are mainly members of an elite, hand-picked tank-crew who seem to have been blessed by fortune. Now, on the eve of a major battle, they are doubly unnerved. First there is the arrival of a probing American journalist seeking some image that will encapsulate this most hellish of wars. Even more disturbing is the crew's apprehension of certain death: the feeling that the protective spirit has abandoned them. So they seriously debate whether in battle they should nobble their machine and thus ensure their survival.
Up to its last quarter hour, this strikes me as an honest, unglamorous portrait of war. Whitby, whose previous convictions include a South American trilogy, has clearly done his homework. He knows all about Mark IV tanks, about the provision of prostitutes for men on the edge of battle and about the death-fixated "holy friars" who scented carnage. Even more importantly, he understands fear: in a sense, the play is an extension of the eve-of-Agincourt passage from Henry V, where Williams says that though they may see the beginning of the day, "I think we shall never see the end of it".
I don't doubt the accuracy of Whitby's portrait, even down to the presence of Punjab and Caribbean gunners and technicians. His play is also saltily written and emotionally affecting: there's a heart-stopping moment when one of the crew first indicates to the Belgian prostitute that death is inevitable. But, without revealing the climax, it has a touch of what Paul Fussell called "the chivalric mystique of self-sacrifice" which war-poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen did so much to deflate. Whitby resolves the death-or-life debate theatrically but not intellectually.
The flaws are camouflaged, however, by Mendes's production, by Anthony Ward's afforested design and by the quality of the acting. Dougray Scott as the socialist-mystic chief, Ray Winstone as the ruggedly honest tank-driver, Finbar Lynch as the vehement proponent of survival, Adrian Scarborough as the working-class religious believer and Nitin Ganatra as the Punjabi gunner stand out in a first- rate ensemble. Mendes both brings out each character's singularity and reminds us that war, like theatre, relies on mutual dependence. Rather than take the safe option of reviving a classic, he has also showcased a promising writer who, whatever his faults, clearly understands the disciplines of war.
Until November 25. Box office: 020-7369 1732.
