HATTIE Naylor’s adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel, The Night Watch, brings to life post war and wartime events and their effects on five people, who slowly uncover their secrets.
Directed by Rebecca Gatward, The Night Watch is about illicit love and heroism and unwinds backwards from 1947 to 1944 and then 1941.
The scenes are set in a dating agency, a bombed out church and a prison cell. Some characters clearly prefer fighting to peacetime twiddling of fingers.
Kay Langrish made believable by Jodie McNee, is affected in this way. In a riveting performance, she indicates her butch character’s love of the danger of wartime ambulance work shared with her colleague Mickey (Gbemisola Ikumelo) The more horrific the injury, the more she relishes her job.
She and two other women, Julia Standing (Lucy Briggs-Owen) and the clever and sweet-natured Helen Giniver (Kelly Hotten) are involved in a lesbian love tangle.
Kay saves another woman, Viv Pearce, played by Thalissa Teixeira from prosecution for abortion after an affair with a married lover.
Two men share a prison cell. One is the fragile Duncan, Viv’s brother, played well by Joe Jameson. He has been imprisoned for an illegal suicide pact before moving in with a mysterious ‘uncle’.
The other is conscientious objector, Robert Fraser (Ben Addis),
The interaction of the characters is good and the troubles life has thrust upon them, well illustrated.
Dan Jones must be praised for his music and sounds of war.
*The Night Watch is at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester until June 18. Tickets are available from 0161 833 9833 or from royalexchange.co.uk: Star rating
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