Review: The 67s

“All I know is that it’s a great big war and all the boys keep going into it”

It is 4:30 am Easter Monday 1917, and we are underground. We join three Canadian soldiers, Grange, Goodman and Cavalier, as they count down the minutes until they must pick up their rifles and go over the top. William Lloyd‘s The 67s is one part historical research project and one part exercise in humanity. Following the 67th Battery Fuelled Artillery of the Canadian Armed Forces, Lloyd’s independent research at the University of Toronto and Trinity College arrives at the night before the Battle of Vimy Ridge as perhaps the deadliest day in Canadian military history.

Image credits: Emma Jennings

“After traversing about a mile of trenches… we arrived at the entrance of a long tunnel which we entered and, proceeding almost to the other end of it, made ourselves comfortable and awaited the signal… Our guns had been silent almost all night… but at 5.30 the barrage was opened up. Even down in the tunnel, which was close to 60 feet deep, the sound was like a vast roll of thunder. We hurried out and I do not think I shall ever forget the sight which met our eyes as we reached the lip of the crater into which the tunnel ran.”

-Sergeant Harold Panabaker, Royal Canadian Horse Artillery

Image credits: Emma Jennings

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The production’s great feat is that it is in real time. Lloyd has us sit with these three soldiers for an hour exactly, from 4:30 to 5:30, when they must go over the top. This decision makes for a bare, raw production where the audience shares the immediacy of the call to arms with the soldiers that we watch: our feelings are not spared. On the cast’s part, harried timekeeping and impulsive checking of watches is true to both the expiration date of the soldiers’ safety and the show’s runtime, affording a real interiority and shared pacing. The low space of the Corpus Playrooms lends to that claustrophobia specific to trench warfare, and the track of muted overhead explosions grounds us in these barracks with these soldiers. We are under the low-hanging ceiling of history.

The Cambridge Amateur Dramatics Club more than meets the sensitivity and power of this project. Director Emma Jennings handles the subject matter with dexterity and capability. The three soldiers animate the spare space: Grange (Christina Huang) deploys artful mannerisms of nonchalance, the jut of a lip, the tap of a foot, to the effect of a caged, frenetic energy. Gabrielle Kurniawan is equally winning as Goodman, in turns irate and then funny—misquoting Shakespeare retains the power to win laughter—whilst Alexis Diaz‘s more sober Cavalier commands a quiet gravity.

Image credits: Emma Jennings

The 67s is a testament to the powers of record and ensouled history. Lloyd gives us live history, and his rich factual density is never tiring, only sincere. Hugo Aaronson‘s narrator interrupts the charged main action to essentially give the audience quick history lessons. Static interruptions of projectors deliver helpful contexts of critical Allied victories that accommodate those in the audience not already well versed in military history. Praise must go to Tom Barry‘s lighting direction in swapping out claustrophobic immediacy for the cold buzz of the projector. These superimposed photographs, maps and newspaper clippings demand attention and never let us forget for a moment that these people were real.

“Some of us aren’t so lucky. Some of us have to live with it.”

Step away from the books for a moving, powerful production well worth feeling. If you have an hour between revision modules, give it to The 67s.

5/5

The 67s is showing at the Corpus Playroom from Tuesday 13th – Saturday 17th May. Grab your tickets here.

Featured image credit: Emma Jennings