Blood and Chocolate – review

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/oct/07/blood-and-chocolate-review

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York was founded by the Romans, settled by the Vikings and revitalised by the railways. But it is also a city built on chocolate, because the confectioners Joseph Terry and Joseph Rowntree established rival factories on either side of town. Rowntree has since been acquired by Nestlé and chocolate oranges are now produced in Poland. But the companies' finest hour is celebrated in this large-scale community drama, jointly produced by Pilot, Slung Low and York Theatre Royal.

It begins with the historical fact that in December 1914 the lord mayor of York decreed that every soldier from the city serving at the front should receive a free ration of sweets in a commemorative tin – scant consolation, perhaps, for being cut to ribbons in a hell-on-earth, though Mike Kenny's script includes a fanciful incident in which a soldier's life is spared by a German sniper striking a bullseye to his Christmas gift.

The sheer scale of the walkabout production becomes mesmerising. To proceed behind a military band through streets lined with bunting and cheering suffragettes feels about as close as you can come to the festive optimism of marching off to war; albeit while wearing headsets and radio transmitters to follow the action.

The method of delivery invariably causes some of the dialogue to feel a little disembodied, though director Alan Lane pulls off some stunning technical feats, such as a flatbed truck transformed into a tableau of the trenches, or the curiously moving sight of a tree swathed in gauze. Yet the technology always remains at the service of Kenny's script, which contains echoes of his version of the York Mystery Plays presented last year. The brutal assault of a conscientious objector is briefly halted by a bystander who observes that he who is without sin should cast the first stone (though in this case the enraged crowd cast their stones regardless). Even the interval proves to be memorable, as tin mugs of hot chocolate are handed out in a local church while a choir sings a requiem for the fallen. The huge trench that has been dug outside seems to take veracity to new extremes; and though it turns out to be for the repair of a gas main, it's testament to the production's powers of suggestion that the phantasmagoric presence of the war appears to be everywhere.

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