★★★★
Sandi Toksvig’s 2011 play Bully Boy is not what you might expect from the UK comedian.
Written in a hot rage, the play explores the hypocrisies and psychological impact of contemporary warfare. Presented by independent theatre company A Night Of Play, which formed as a vehicle to develop “issue-driven” work, this intimate performance is being staged at Sydney’s newest theatre space, Blood Moon Theatre.
Private Eddie Clark (Patrick Cullen) is a working class lad from Burnley, Lincolnshire and is one month shy of completing his second deployment in Afghanistan. Sporting a broad Northern accent, he is brash and irreverent with drops of casual racism. He is separated by age, class and rank from the bookish Major Oscar Hadley (Jaymie Knight), who is ethically scrupulous and works with rigorous attention to protocol. Hadley has been disabled since serving in the Falklands War. Their lives collide when Eddie is accused of throwing an eight-year-old boy named Omar down a well.
Bridging across histories and generations, the dialogue between the two characters describes the borderless nature of contemporary warfare, where there is no definitive front to fight on. Eddie and Oscar are similarly locked within a struggle to rationally comprehend the loss of bodies, limbs and minds left in unresolved corners of the globe that have been torn apart by conflict. Under the careful directorial hand of Deborah Mulhall, Bully Boy generates an uneasy yet sympathetic sense of moral ambiguity.
As a minor drawback, it seems the death of Omar may serve more as a bone of ethical contention between the two characters rather than a point of entry into the issue of civilian casualties as collateral damage. This feels like a loose end, albeit a forgivable one as the scope of Toksvig’s text is clearly the myriad experiences of post-war trauma and the insufficient institutional responses to returned soldiers. The play builds a searing portrait of veterans conditioned for combat and unable to transition back into civilian life.
This is a sharp and compelling production featuring strong performances from Knight and Cullen. While Bully Boy may revisit familiar themes, Toksvig deploys snippets of wry humour that convey the sense of pain and futility following military interventions; for instance, the meagre gesture of plaques and medals to commemorate servicemen in need of genuine rehabilitation, or the fact that the number of veteran suicides dwarfs the number of deaths in combat.
Bully Boy is playing at Blood Moon Theatre, The World Bar until Saturday March 26.
