★★★★☆

Four Stars

I love Ben Howard’s music. His debut album, Every Kingdom, was magical and vivid and atmospheric. His soft voice brimmed with feeling; it was uplifting – literally – it carried you far from the present moment, soaring through the beautiful world the lyrics beguiled into being.

I Forget Where We Were is very different in tone and emphasis, though no less accomplished. This time, the songs’ focal point is downwards, sinking through dark, reverberating strings; the choruses expanding outwards rather than up, weighted down, perhaps, by the predominant emotion of the record: grief.

It is, without a shadow of doubt, built on loss and heartbreak. From the single ‘End of the Affair’: “Living without her / Living at all / Seems to slow me down / Living forever / Hell, I don’t know / Do I care, do I care?” to highlight of the album ‘In Dreams’ with refrain, “I live alone now, I live alone in life without you here” the lyrics tell of being trapped in loneliness, and of a disillusionment with the heady summersaulting happiness of Every Kingdom.

You can hear traces of the Ben Howard of old in stand-out tracks ‘She Treats Me Well’ and ‘Let’s Go Dancing’, but here too, the enmeshing harmonies echo with a forlorn weariness. The familiar acoustic deftness at the forefront of ‘In Dreams’ is enveloped by lo-fi electric guitar notes in title track ‘I Forget Where We Were’ and desperate finale ‘All Is Now Harmed’.

But the highlight for me is opening track ‘Small Things’ for its hollow but resounding start, withheld at first, filled with air and darkness, but by the end reaching a faster, unyielding plateau of relentless and rippling noise. While equally worth a mention is sleepy and mournful ‘Evergreen’ with the delicately haunting chorus: “Take me back to the catacombs / I am tempted by her love / Bluest eyes against my own skin / I’ve never been so caught up.”

On first listen I was a little unsure, my expectations naturally elevated by Every Kingdom. But after listening to each song several times, I was quickly convinced. Behind the melancholic exterior, I Forget Where We Were offers something enduring and strangely addictive, something that merits a different kind of appreciation from its predecessor, compelling you to listen again and again to try in vain to pinpoint exactly what it might be.

In case the plethora of predictably ham-fisted BBC documentaries and throwaway newspaper inserts somehow haven’t reached you, you should probably be aware that this year marks the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. And to mark the occasion, theatre companies nationwide have been producing shows that use the war as a central motif, either by directly placing events between 1914 and 1918, or by examining the social fallout that inevitably accompanies war.

Despite undeniably good intentions, however, the abundance of these, for want of a better word, ‘commemorative’ plays is beginning to threaten tedium. That war is a fundamentally thought-provoking topic is undeniable; one only has to think of the eternally arresting poetry of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. Yet the predictable, hackneyed nature of the themes that characterise the majority of these plays is similarly patent and, as a device, they seem altogether too obvious a route to the hearts of an audience.

Earlier this year, I saw An August Bank Holiday Lark at the Oxford Playhouse. Set in the fictional village of Greenmill, Deborah McAndrew’s play focuses on the idyllic country life of the early Twentieth Century and its slow demise as a result of the First World War. All the expected characters were present: two young lovers ripped apart by conscription, an elderly father bereft of his two sons, an eager young man deemed unfit for service. I enjoyed the play; it was well-scripted, well-directed and well-acted, but I was left with an immovable anxiety that I had not been as moved as I should have been.

For this, the blame can be partially laid at the door of the media. The bombardment of documentaries, dramas and discussions has rendered me somewhat unable to appreciate the tragedy. There is a genuine danger of desensitisation, of a collective dulling of our perception of the profundity of war through sheer familiarity with it. But this familiarity is also the fault of our theatres.

In the coming weeks, no less than four separate shows about WW1 are being performed in Oxford, including an adaptation of Pat Barker’s Regeneration, which arrives at the OP in 6th week. For the dramatist, war presents situations in which emotion is easily contrived: the loneliness of a young bride awaiting her husband’s return, the fear of a recruit heading to the front-line for the first time, the sorrow of a parent confronted with news of their fallen son. Yet, on stage, are these feelings as perennially profound as we are repeatedly told? “Moving”, “compassionate”, “poignant” boast the posters, but isn’t the proliferation of such productions the very antithesis of such claims? Can these productions, sharing similar themes, similar relationships, similar characters, all be emotionally stirring?

Quality does not always ensure such an outcome, as proved by An August Bank Holiday Lark, a commendable play, in most respects, that I enjoyed seeing but was not deeply moved by. The truth is that in such a climate of commemoration, it is originality that ensures a play has a strong emotional impact on the audience.

In June, I saw a dramatisation of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, also at the OP. Yes, it is set in the time of the Second World War but the same, or similar, rules should apply. As a play, the lack of centrality, a fundamental component of the novel, ensures that the audience is never fully immersed. As an eyeglass into the harrowing trauma of conflict, however, its fervent unpredictability rendered it surprisingly touching.

It is the revelation of a new perspective on well-worn stories that truly engages an audience. It is the inclusion of an unusual character or an alternative opinion. These are devices that break fresh ground. They circumvent the prism of mass-media opinions, blow away the haze of familiarity and promote tangible insight into the tragedy. And they are much needed in First World War drama, lest we forget.