Dramatic commemorations of World War I continue. To coincide with the centenary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, Chichester presents a new play by Mark Hayhurst which sidesteps the usual topics by considering those young men shot for desertion. He tells a largely imagined version of the story of two real-life privates from the “Manchester Pals” infantry company who left the front line but were arrested at Dieppe, tried and executed. The gravestone of Albert Ingham is unique in carrying the legend “Shot at dawn” (hence the title), constituting all but a declaration that he was executed. Hayhurst intercuts scenes of Ingham and Alfred Longshaw serving on the front then deserting with an (equally) invented account of Ingham’s father’s campaign to be allowed the controversial epitaph.

David Moorst is a delight as the whip-smart, wisecracking Longshaw, but the twin foci are Tom Gill as Bert Ingham, an innocent who finds a strength and resolve at the very end, and Phil Davis as his father George, red-faced, unsmiling and unable even to explain his determination. Director Jonathan Munby copes with the early disappearance of most of the troops (killed in the first “big push”) by having them execute a series of drilled scene-changes.

There are a lot of these, as Hayhurst does not believe in leaving anything merely implied, much less altogether unsaid. As with his earlier success Taken At Midnight (which transferred briefly to the West End last year), he spells everything out at the expense of dramatic flow; Munby’s scenographic tactic makes a virtue out of necessity. It’s also a little uncomfortable that the pair of plays currently in performance in Chichester’s two spaces utilize 32 actors in all, of whom only two are female: Kelly Price and Amelda Brown as Ingham’s sister and mother respectively. It would be problematic to cast across genders in such naturalistic war dramas, but there really needs to be some levelling-up later in the season.

Not a perfect piece, then, but opening as it did on the day when a British MP was shot and killed apparently for supporting ongoing engagement in Europe, it makes a powerful testimony to the honourableness even of uncomfortable truths.

Written for the Financial Times.