Private Peaceful at Birmingham Rep

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Tue 19 Apr 2022 - Sat 23 Apr 2022

When Nottingham Playhouse asked local children which book they would most like to see adapted for the stage there was a resounding answer – Michael Morpurgo's Private Peaceful. The story of two brothers, from their childhood in Devon to the trenches of World War One, has long been a favourite of readers and now comes to the stage in a UK tour which sees the show playing Birmingham Rep on April 19-23.

Taking the lead role of the younger brother Tommo, Daniel Rainford fully understands the love people have for the story and for his character. "This role is a dream come true for me. I'm from Nottinghamshire and had seen the film of Private Peaceful so I really wanted to play one of the brothers. Tommo is a kid with a big imagination. He hasn't got much back home - he's bullied at school, he's experienced trauma at a very young age, he's not perfect, he's always making mistakes and beating himself up for it, he's not kind to himself. All he wants is to make his dad and his family proud, like we all do.



And Daniel adds: "He's so emotionally honest, he doesn't filter himself. He's the one saying 'this is awful, I don't understand why you're not saying how bad this is, boys are just going out and getting shot'. He's the one asking the questions."

Daniel, who played Sam Wallace in the Birmingham-made show Doctors and also appears in the new Batman film, says young audiences are quickly entranced by Private Peaceful's story. "We have a lot of school groups in the audience and it's so funny because at the beginning they can be a bit loud but after only about five minutes they suddenly go quiet and are listening. They are whipped along."

And he feels the story has strong messages for people of all ages. "I hope the audience feel the power of communication, that we need to talk to each other and not just make decisions to try and impress someone. This show isn't just about war, it's also about growing up, and growing up is painful. You realise you need to say the unsaid, to speak to your loved ones because you don't know how long they will be around."

Being in the cast gave Daniel the opportunity to meet Michael Morpurgo, whose other First World War novel War Horse has been an international success as a National Theatre stage show. "He was so kind and respectful, like great children's authors are. He respects kids and kids' opinions and the magic of their innocence and the truthfulness of their responses."



And, as fellow cast member Emma Manton says, the story and the stage show are truthful in their depiction of armed conflict. "Michael doesn't talk down to audiences, it's not all sweetness and light on that battlefield - when we see shellshock, we see shellshock and he trusts that they can deal with that."

With the war in Ukraine coinciding with the Private Peaceful tour, Emma says the show has a sudden new resonance. "It feels like a story which morphs with the news. When there was the first invasion of Ukraine, we were doing the show and there is a moment when the recruiting officer is asking for volunteers and we had a particularly engaged schools' audience that day, and they started volunteering. You suddenly felt the weight of responsibility to tell the whole story. They were with us but we had to carry that through to see what that meant – stepping forward to make that decision has consequences."

She adds: "What those men went through in 1914-1918 feels very present in this piece and now we are facing a war in Europe again. Young people are having to make big decisions with consequences that they can't really foresee and it feels like the story is a fulfilment of that."

Emma plays a range of characters including the boys' mother, a schoolteacher, child bully, soldiers, a chaplain and a woman who accuses Tommo of being a coward for not fighting – despite the fact he is too young to enlist. Switching all these roles has its challenges. "It's a real acting exercise to hit the ground running with every character because if you miss a moment it's gone, you can't get it again," Emma says. "It's particularly difficult when I go back to playing the boys' mother because the emotion is very accessible especially when you look out and see all those young faces staring back at you, and I have a son. Then having to put that aside in a few seconds and come on and be the person who is ordering their death, it does take dexterity."

But she is relishing that challenge: "But we worked a lot in rehearsals to make sure we had done exactly the same character work on the teacher that turns up for one line as we had for Tommo who we see all the way through as that's the only way to have fully rounded characters."

It is a welcome return to The Rep for Leicester-based Emma whose previous shows at the theatre include the award-winning His Dark Materials. "I'm looking forward to going back, it's a lovely theatre," she says. "I believe that bringing theatre to young audiences is one of the most important jobs we have. This story has now become phenomenally relevant in a way we could never have realised when we first started working on this project two years ago. To be looking back on history and telling its stories is really important."

Private Peaceful is staged at Birmingham Rep on April 19-23, see www.birmingham-rep.co.uk or call the box office on 0121 236 4455 for more information and tickets.

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!date 19/04/2022 -- 23/04/2022
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