Pat Barker’s novel trilogy, adapted by Nicholas Wright with his customary skill and sensitivity, avoids all the pitfalls of World War I centenary programming. It is not flag-waving, but takes seriously the concepts of individual and patriotic honour. It is not a “lions led by donkeys” polemic, but centres on perspectives on shell-shock and in particular on one man who has publicly repudiated the official rationale for involvement. The fact that that man, Siegfried Sassoon, was both socially comfortable and a prominent poet introduces a cultural dimension without getting airy-fairy. Running through everything is an awareness of class: not as deep a theme here as in Barker’s books, but a recurrent motif, both in the blatant case of Bradford grammar-school boy Billy Prior elevated to officer rank and in several nuanced moments between the more “traditional” officers.
    
At its core, though, this is a piece about attitudes: thoughts, feelings, suppressed impulses, about the war and all matters relating. The setting of Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where Sassoon was treated during his stay there in 1917 by W.H.R. Rivers and encouraged the poetic efforts of Wilfred Owen, situates the men away from the war itself yet keeps it intimately close as a topic and a motivator.
    
Simon Godwin returns to his early stamping ground in Northampton and supplies a keynote of directorial application perfectly in sympathy with Wright’s approach as an adapter. Stephen Boxer treads the fine line between restraint and reticence as Dr Rivers, never offering more than a half-smile; Tim Delap’s dignified yet animated Sassoon is augmented by a distinct physical resemblance. It is a testimony to Garman Rhys’s open, direct performance as Owen that I repeatedly tried to recall which of his performances I had seen before, until discovering that he has only just graduated from drama school. Wright’s adaptation is nominally of the entire Barker trilogy, but in practice it concentrates almost entirely on the novel Regeneration itself, drawing on its two successors only to tie up loose ends. Some cuts go beyond even the bone: the major figure of Prior’s girlfriend Sarah remains offstage, leaving an entirely male environment save for a token nursing sister. Nevertheless, it makes for a quietly compelling drama and a fitting, dignified meditation on the events of a century ago.
    
Written for the Financial Times.