In the autumn of 1914 the mayor of the Lancashire mill town of Accrington offered to raise a battalion of 1,000 men for the war against Germany. In less than two weeks recruitment was complete and the battalion marched happily off to war. Most of them never came back. Along with 60,000 others they went like lambs to the slaughter on the first day of the battle of the Somme.
Peter Whelan's tough, humane play, first produced by the RSC in the 1980s, deserves this revival. It is unusual in that its focus is less on the men fighting in France, more on the women left behind in Accrington, forging independent lives for themselves. In Edward Kemp's production the kitchen table is in the foreground while the red, blood-streaked fires of France burn behind.
But the war taking place here is not just between the British and the Germans, but between men and women and different ways of thinking. Twenty-nine-year-old May is a new breed of working class. An embryonic Margaret Thatcher, she stands on her own two feet, is beholden to nobody and has mapped out a future that includes buying a little shop and easing herself into the middle classes. Young Tom, 10 years her junior, is a utopian socialist who believes in a world where money is unimportant and skills can be traded. No wonder these two never succeed in consummating their love.
Whelan's quietly wondrous play asks the big questions: is it the individual or society that really matters? Should you bow to authority or challenge it? The men go off to war almost joyfully, cheered by the women. Only later do they realise that they are being led by fools, and the women learn that they are being lied to by government and newspapers.
The play has its imperfections, particularly in the structuring of the early scenes, and Kemp's production and the individual performances take a while to bloom. But the drama sings with humanity, the sensual delight of body upon body, and the hurt of knowing you will have to learn to live without love.
· Until February 9. Box office: 01243 781312.
