Search

Home > Home Front > 31 July 1917 - Adeline Lumley


	Podcast:		Home Front
	Episode:		31 July 1917 - Adeline Lumley
	Category:		Arts
	Duration:		00:12:02
	Publish Date:		2017-07-31 06:15:00
	Description:		31 July 1917 marked the first day of Passchendaele, and - at the Maudsley hospital in London - Adeline and Phyllis are on the offensive. Written by Katie Hims Directed by Jessica Dromgoole Notes Home Front Season 11 focuses on madness and trauma, both military and civilian, and is subtitled 'Broken and Mad', a line from the Sassoon poem, Survivors No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. Of course they're 'longing to go out again,'- These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,- Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride... Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad. Folkestone is still recovering from the first Gotha Air Raid that struck suddenly and devastatingly on 25 May 1917, killing nearly a hundred citizens. At the heart of this narrative are three soldiers suffering war neurosis (shell shock), but the story refracts out to the madness of a town that has recently experienced significant trauma. The polarities of treatment for soldiers - from the talking cure of Dr Argent (& WH Rivers) to the 'punitive' methods of Dr Pilchard (& Lewis Yealland) - find a parallel in civilian manifestations. Post air raid anxiety, on a personal and a civic scale, can be treated by arrest and prosecution, or by accommodation and understanding.
	Total Play:		0