THEATRE REVIEW: The Unreturning

No man is an island, wrote the cleric poet Donne. An assertion which the characters in Anna Jordan’s intense and harrowing drama The Unreturning would take issue with as they struggle to connect with people from a place called home, namely Scarborough, after returning from the field of battle.

A theme echoed in the plot-pivotal set and projection design by Andrzej Goulding: a large shipping container, strong on the outside, hollow within, around which wave upon cold wave crashes and recedes; and through which characters and thoughts scramble like rats in a maze.

Skilfully interweaving three different stories from three different time periods – with Jared Garfield as George, a soldier returning from the Great War suffering from so-called “war strain” (what we would now call PTSD); Joe Layton as Frankie, a soldier returning from Iraq who was dismissed under a cloud of shame; and Jonnie Riordan as Nat, a pacifist from the future returning to a land riven by war and division after dodging conscription by fleeing to Norway – director Neil Bettles has created a near flawless production which not only gets under the skin, sinews and soul of each of the three characters, but lives up to one of the co-producing company’s names in being a Frantic Assembly of fantastic performers.

The latter of whom’s desperate journey across land and sea, and aboard capsized boat and truck undercarriage, mirroring that of so many equally desperate refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war, persecution and famine who are unfairly demonised in today’s right wing press and by rabble-rousers such as Farage. And who can forget Theresa May’s van-driven billboards threatening illegal immigrants with arrest unless they “Go Home”? To where, whom and for what?

Watching the battle-scarred soldiers try to adjust to civilian life, one was reminded of the scene in Kathryn Bigelow’s war thriller Hurt Locker when Jeremy Renner’s shell-shocked sergeant William James is struck dumb by the simple task of choosing a box of cereal from a long aisle of shelves jam-packed with different types and brands while men, women and children in the Arab world are forced to survive on a diet of barter, handouts and theft.

As each of the men state in their opening monologues, “I want to return to my home”. One to see his wife, one to see his brother (Kieton Saunders-Browne making an assured professional stage debut as Finn) and one to see his mother and mates down the pub. But with the horrors of war fresh in the mind, with no heroes welcome of “fanfares and brass bands”, and with nothing and everything ultimately changed, it is little wonder that one of the actors doubling as a narrators remarks: “What is home? he thinks, and where?”

In Anna Jordan’s nightmarish world, every man is an island “entire of itself”. An island with a receding coastline for whom the bell tolls.