As the Western world bands
together to commemorate the various centenaries
of the First World War, there is any number of concerts, plays, books,
films, television series and CDs to mark the occasion. To mark the centenary of
the Gallipoli landing, the Ensemble theatre
is staging The ANZAC Project, a double-bill of
two new plays, which looks at the event and asks ‘what does it mean to us, now,
here, today?’ Ensemble theatre is not alone in asking these questions, but perhaps
we should all be taking a leaf out of these umpteen commemorations and asking
ourselves ‘why is this military failure so celebrated?’
The ANZAC Project is comprised of two new plays – ‘Dear Mum and Dad’, by Geoffrey Atherden,
in which a woman discovers a letter from her great-grandfather and learns of
his experiences during World War I; and ‘Light
Begins To Fade’, by Vanessa
Bates, in which several stories intertwine, not least a group of television
writers trying to find their way to tell the story of the Gallipoli landing,
and the wider issues it opens up. While united in theme and idea, these plays
work in very different ways and, ultimately, Bates’ is the more successful, the
more theatrical.
