Not About Heroes

This show has now closed, click here for a listing of current and future London shows

Play From 7 November 2006 to 18 November 2006

Trafalgar Studios 2 At the Whitehall Theatre, Whitehall, London

Stephen MacDonald's play Not About Heroes in a production directed by Caroline Clegg. This critically acclaimed production opened last year at The Imperial War Museum before transferring to the Cabinet War Rooms and now into the West End, prior to a national tour.

During WWII, two of England's greatest twentieth century poets met in Craiglockhart War Hospital. Siegfried Sassoon was a decorated war hero who was hospitalised after protesting against the continuing war. Wilfred Owen was a victim of shell shock and accused of cowardice. Upon returning to the front Sassoon was shot in the head, but survived. Owen went on to win a Military Cross and die in the trenches four days before Armistice.

Stephen MacDonald's acclaimed play is a moving celebration of their friendship, their poetry, the power of words and the futility of war.

Siegfried Sassoon: Born 8 September 1886 in Kent, died 1 September 1967 in Wiltshire.

Wilfred Owen: Born 18 March 1893 in Shropshire, killed in action on the Oise-Sambre Canal on 4 November 1918, a week before the Armistice and the end of the First World War.

Stephen MacDonald on Not About Heroes: "This story of their friendship is told almost entirely in my own words. The play is neither a compilation nor a documentary. While I have not intentionally falsified any of the known facts, the Letters and Memoirs leave considerable gaps which I have bridged with scenes based on ideas suggested by the available sources... My motive was to try to understand how a relationship that remains at heart mysterious, could leave such an indelible mark on the literature of their war - and so on our understanding of war itself My best hope is that Not About Heroes might refresh the memory of who these men were and what it was they had to tell."

Not About Heroes was originally staged at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1982 where it won the Scotman's Fringe First Award. The following year it was performed at the King's Head in London, and ws adapted for Yorkshire Television and BBC Radio Four. In 1986, to mark the centenery of the birth of Siegfried Sassoon, a new production of the revised play was presented at the National Theatre in London.