Heroes

Published Thursday 20 October 2005 at 10:45 by Peter Hepple

While watching Heroes it was difficult to erase memories of the first night of Art. It is a French play, translated by one of our best playwrights, it has a short running time, the producer and theatre are the same and it boasts three star actors, one of whom was actually in Art.

It is also easy to guess that it will have a similar success, perhaps more so, because I think it is a better play. Whereas it was not easy to empathise with the characters in Art, this one is just as amusing but is also deeply moving, as we watch the three former officers in the French army marooned in the military hospital in which they have lived for 40 years.

Though the swinging sixties are about to begin it will never touch these men, no longer quite sound in wind and limb and, in the case of two of them, in the head either.

Philippe (Ken Stott) suffers from blackouts because of a head injury, Gustave (John Hurt) still believes they can all escape their confinement, gentle Henri (Richard Griffiths), though having trouble with his legs, has retained enough of his sanity to curb the delusions of the other two and still retains a twinge of sexual excitement when he encounters the pupils and young teacher from the girls’ school next door.

One suspects that Tom Stoppard has had a lot to do with making it profoundly sad as well as guaranteeing a succession of chuckles throughout. But it also owes a lot to designer Robert Jones, who has achieved a wonderfully French setting of trees and wall in beautiful perspective. And to its young director Thea Sharrock, who shows an instinctive understanding of the characters and their unenviable plight.