The Accrington Pals

The Phoenix Players are producing this play to commemorate the centenary of the end of the 1914-18 Great War

 

Wed 25 - Sat 28 April 2018

The Arts Centre

 

The Accrington Pals is a play about this World War – sad, of course, but also lyrical, funny, romantic, political and philosophical.

 

 

At one level it tells the tragic story of how the town of Accrington, Lancashire which raised its own battalion for Kitchener’s New Army and lost almost all its young men in the battle of the Somme.

 

But, unlike a lot of war plays, there is also the sense of the working class community of Accrington, of the wives and sweethearts left behind, the naivety of the young men who went off gladly to fight for king and country, and the anger of the townspeople driven desperate by rumours and over-optimistic reports of the press and the politicians.

 

The play embraces love stories, politics, the class system, the position of women and the stupidity of the war.