JACK

Starts at 5pm “Jack” was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival. It was one of those small shows that can get so easily missed amongst everything else that was on at the Fringe, but if you are looking for theatre at its most basic – one man with a engaging story to tell, then put this one on your “to go to” list.“ Jack” is the story of one World War One veteran, and if you think you have heard them all over the years, then be prepared to be surprised by the honesty of this story as told by family member, writer and performer Stephen Wale. What makes this story so powerful, apart from the fact that it is a true story, is that this is the story of a boy who while then underage, enlisted in the army with the dreams that must have lured many other boys and men to the battlefields of France and Belgium. Jack however has no hero’s story to tell, in fact his war is by many people’s standards an unremarkable one, but remarkable nonetheless because Jack survived and we join him and his story in 1973 as he awaits remaining family members to take him from his home for the last 50 years to visit his sister. This Jack may have returned from the killing grounds and mud-fields of war, but the real Jack, the boy and the man he became out there never came home. Instead, life was to become a constant struggle for him, and Stephen Wale is impressive in his ability to become Jack, to enter into the labyrinth of confusion and conflicts that are now his mind and to give us all an insight into just how society repaid so many “Jacks” when they finally came home. This is true no-hiding theatre, there are no props, no stage set of any kind here for Stephen Wale to help him tell this story. The only assets that Stephen Wale has here is a powerful story and the ability to perform it with true empathy and emotion. As all of those who fought in this war are now no longer with us to tell their stories first hand, we need people like Stephen Wale to continue to tell their stories, to become their voice so that we never forget what they experienced in their lifetimes. There will be Q&A session after the performance.