HAMP
Tuesday 4th - Saturday 8th February.
PRIVATE Arthur Hamp 873426 is a nobody. He's nothing special as a soldier, he just is. So when Private Hamp decides he's had enough, he can't take anymore, why can't the establishment accept this?
It's 1917, the battle of Passchendaele has been ragging for months, one soldier has reached his breaking point. Is Shell shock a crime, is it even recognised as an illness.
These thought provoking questions are asked in John Wilson's powerful and insightful script.
We are now in 2003, for us to try and imagine the world as it was in 1917 is impossible, it has changed beyond recognition. Yet the changes were brought about, primarily by those who fought for, and fundamentally changed the public perception and outlook of the world. Thousands of Private Hamps were lost during 1914-1918, Wilson uses his personal experience of Military Law and its absurdity to challenge our blinkered history of events.
With a strong cast of 16, Hamp will challenge its audience.
WW1 is a difficult subject matter for any production, rest assured its not a comedy,nor a musical, but its certainly not one to miss.It took the British Army 80 years to exonerate all those tried for desertion who were suffering from shell shock..................
' One man, a bugler in a county regiment, little more than a child in years, went raving mad as he staggered acros a trench and fell, dragging with him a headless thing which still kept watch with rifle against shoulder. His shrieks as they pulled the two apart, ring even now in the ears. He died that night simply from shock after the awful tension of the day' Major A. Corbett-Smith 1916.
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