Billy Bishop Goes to War – Jermyn Street Theatre

Oliver Beamish and Charles Aitken in Billy Bishop Goes to War at Jermyn Street Theatre, London. Picture: Robert Workman

Billy Bishop Goes to War continues at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London until 24 November 2018.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

It’s a pleasure to see two actors working together as sensitively as Oliver Beamish, who also plays piano, and Charles Aitken.

Between them they tell a graphic, poignant, horrifying, wryly funny story of a young Canadian who comes to Britain to “fight the Hun” in 1914, eventually becoming a Royal Flying Corps pilot with the highest ever “score” for shooting down enemy planes and therefore a celebrity.

Of course, this is based on a real-life story which it uses to explore the issues such as being a “colonial” fighting someone else’s war, how it feels to become a killing machine and what it’s like to lose most of your friends before you’re 21.

Imaginatively directed (by Jimmy Walters) the piece opens with Beamish as the reflective 1940s Bishop pottering about his delighted cluttered memorabilia-crammed lair (design by Daisy Blower).

Then we flashback as Aitken enters as the younger Bishop. The sequence in which we are in the cockpit with Aitken is convincing edge of the seat stuff but all done with minimum technology and fine acting.

Both actors do lovely work as other characters too with different voices and postures. Aitken as the French bar singer Helene is hilarious, for example, especially as it went wrong at the performance I saw which led to some neat ad-libbing as they expertly retrieved the song.

John Gray’s music fits the wistful ambience perfectly. This show, which he co-created and performed with Eric Peterson (both men are Canadian) for over 40 years, matches words – touching, satirical, perceptive – to simple tunes with lots of piano vamp.

Some of the patter songs (rhyming “whining with maligning” or “naive” and “sleeve”) with the words clearly enunciated over the accompaniment are firmly in the G&S tradition.

There is also more than a whiff of Flanders and Swann here. Beamish has the same sort of insouciant touch at the keyboard that Donald Swann did and his voice blends well with Aitken’s.

It will be a while before I forget Aitken’s nicely judged rapport with the audience as he catches someone’s eye and times a laugh.

Definitely one to catch if you can.

Susan Elkin