Britain, 1940. The situation is desperate, and the Battle of Britain is about to start. Ginger is a radar officer, one of the few women charged with the job of shooting down German bombers. Engaged to a PoW held by the Nazis, she has little time for the dances that offer the local RAF crews sex and solace before they take to skies. Then she meets Billy, a bomber pilot, and in the hothouse of Britain at war, she does something which will change the course of her life forever.
Sharing something in common with Elizabeth Bowen's great novel The Heat of the Day, Gary Owen's four-hander captures the confusion of ordinary people living extraordinary lives in the emotional maelstrom of war. Then it fast-forwards 60 years, shows the consequences of Ginger's actions and explores the possibility of forgiveness and whether something broken can be remade.
Owen's play is always highly watchable, and Brigid Larmour's canny production piles on the elegiac, along with the Vaughan Williams, to give the evening the emotional ballast it needs, as young lives are contrasted with those of a couple of crusty 80 year olds for whom memory and regret walk cheek-by-jowl. Owen's script springs few surprises, but it has a truthfulness and compassion about it as it entwines personal morality with the moral choices of war and the human instinct to cling together in adversity.
As the elderly Ruth and James, Angela Down and Gawn Grainger rise to the challenge of the play's trickier half, and Paul Woodson and Amy Hall give lovely unaffected performances as the youngsters trembling on the brink of an uncertain future.
· Until May 5. Box office: 01923 225671
