Come As You Arts presents
God Wept and The Devil Laughed
The love that binds and the sacrifices made by a family when a world goes to war are at the heart of the world première of God Wept and the Devil Laughed – the sequel to The Play That Killed Me – ‘A triumph all around.’ Alan Hulme, whatsonstage.com
Thu 14 - Sun 17 July
Press night Thu 14 July, 8pm
Interviews available with writer and director Justin MacGregor and star, former Hollyoaks actor, Anthony Quinlan
As part of its commitment to supporting up-and-coming talent The Lowry is proud to present the world première of God Wept and the Devil Laughed as part of its exclusive series of plays entitled NeverBeenSeen. The NeverBeenSeen series sees The Lowry work with up-and-coming theatre companies to develop exciting new work. The first play in this series, The Play That Killed Me, also written by Justin MacGregor, was a sell-out hit last September.
Almost all of the cast from The Play That Killed Me return for this production and are joined by Anthony Quinlan, who has been Gilly Roach on Hollyoaks for seven years and Susi Wrenshaw (The Crypt Project) and Thomas McGarva (Eight).
Inspired by the writer’s family, God Wept and the Devil Laughed tells the story of two brothers who enlist while underage (a mere fourteen and fifteen years old) in order to accompany their brother-in-law Doug, husband of their eldest sister, to war.
They soon find themselves in some of the most dreadful and dangerous campaigns of the war. With the Eighth Army they face the nightmare of Rommel before finding themselves at the feet of Monte Cassino for four months, in the bloodiest and costliest battle in Western Europe since the First World War.
But those battles in no way prepare them for the horrors that await when they enter the gates of the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.
The History of God Wept and the Devil Laughed.
When I was fourteen, my sister and I spent three months living with my grandmother Joan in the small village in Wales that she had retired to. Across the street lived her big sister Gin with husband Doug. His relatives lived further down the road. Everyone knew each other and you could come and go as though the village was one big house filled with one massive extended family.
Over those months, I found myself often slipping over to Gin and Doug’s for a cup of tea and to hear his stories.
The stories were both very funny and sad and many focused on the war. To me, as a teenager, they seemed full of excitement and adventure.
I would have to grow older and more mature to realize the sacrifice and bitterness that accompanied each and every one of them.
Doug had the most amazing array of photos from the war – especially from North Africa and Italy. Having only ever seen such photos in history books, it felt like such a thrill to hold a real photo from there, taken for or by the person sitting next to me. It was like having my own private, living history book, filled with the personal stories of those who were there, on the ground, average, working men who found themselves, quite unexpectedly, as walk-on parts in the history of their time.
Doug told me how the younger brothers of his wife, Gin, had followed him to war: these would be my great uncles Ken and Lewis. They had used the long lines to dodge questions about their age and sign up, figuring that it was not fair that Doug had to go to war alone while their other brother-in-law – my grandfather Ron – got to do his bit based in England flying bombers. They felt brothers had to stick together.
The three soon found themselves in the desert preparing to face Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika. Because of their obvious youth, Lewis and Ken had been assigned the role of gathering what needed to be gathered, Lewis as a Supply Sergeant.
This meant getting anything needed by the army…even if it meant stealing.
Doug told me stories about their adventures, how Lewis would get “caught” by the locals, lose a stripe, get promoted for some small act, and then repeat this cycle. Doug figured that, by the end of the war, Lewis had been a Sergeant seven times at least.
Doug didn’t mention the fighting much. But that was no surprise: North Africa meant Rommel, and Rommel had meant death for a lot of his friends and comrades.
But not for the three brothers. They saw Rommel defeated and made it out of North Africa. They survived the invasion and battle for Sicily as Monty and Patton vied for the island. By 1944, they found themselves at the Battle of Monte Cassino.
Doug didn’t talk much about that, nor about the events afterwards. I didn’t push him: though I was young, I could tell this was not a part of his life he wanted to recall. At least not in his living room in Wales with the sun on the hills.
A month or so into our visit, we went to see Ken and Lewis and meet the rest of our family – many of whom my sister and I had never met. After a host of welcoming visits, it was decided that we would all take a B&B holiday to North Wales.
During that holiday, as Doug or Ken or Lewis would sneak me a Shandy while one of the other two distracted my grandmother, or after riding bumper cars and gazing at a beautiful sunset, more of their stories would suddenly emerge. They would come out all at once, concise, with no time for questions, like a confession. Then the moment would be gone, and we would be back in the present, sipping Shandies, looking at sunsets, deciding if we should ride the bumper cars again.
These stories make up the heart of God Wept and the Devil Laughed. I have woven them in with those of Joan’s husband, my grandfather Ron, who was based in England, flying bombers, before he was eventually shot down over Berlin on the same day Ken, Lewis and Doug watched the monastery at Monte Cassino get bombed into ruins by the Allies.
And all these stories are tied up with those of my grandmother Joan and my Auntie Gin, who made their own sacrifices in the years of the war, wondering if the lives they dreamed of would ever happen, if war was a dream you could wake up from into a world where everything was more or less the same.
When the Lowry made The Play That Killed Me the first of its NeverBeenSeen series, I realized that play (which was about my other grandfather Hector putting on plays for the troops in Africa) was actually the first in a series about war, about average people in extraordinary circumstances, about living your life as history swirls around you, unconcerned about all that you love, that you hold dear, that you care about.
I started to think about Doug and Gin, about Ken and Lewis, and Joan and Ron. I thought about one family from a small village doing its part and how their story was wound up in our world and, of course, in my very existence. I decided that to tell their story I would build it around a confession, as that is still how their stories seem to me.
That means having actors age from fourteen to seventy plus and back again, and reminds me of Doug, in his seventies, tapping the side of his head and saying: “I’m still a young man in here. The old man I see in the mirror? Don’t know him.”
This has been a hard story to write. For, despite the horrors they saw, the history that tried to consume them, the enemies that tried to kill them, Ken and Lewis and their families never stopped laughing or loving life and each other. Capturing that, passing on that message, is important to me. If you survive horror, if you endure war, if you stare into the void and have it stare back, life is still to be treasured and family is still a gift beyond measure.
Even if you can never forget.
This production is the second for Come As You Arts North West at The Lowry.
Thu 14 July – Sun 17 July
God Wept and the Devil Laughed
Times Eves 8pm & Sun 4pm
Tickets £5, £10 (£2 off conc.)