Project Arts Centre

Still the Blackbird Sings: Incidents at Ebrington Barracks

begins with an extended visual image; a mass of soldiers’ bodies piled upon each other, like sacrifices on a funeral pyre. Under Sarah Jane Shiels’ chalky light, the foreshadowed mortality is no accident. Dave Duggan’s play has its’ eye on the spectre of death as well as the ghost of poet-soldier Francis Ledwidge, who, as a member of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, lost his life in 1917 while repairing a road just north of Ypres.

Commissioned by the Playhouse Theatre, Derry, Still, the Blackbird Singsimagines the months that Ledwidge spent on leave in Derry, awaiting his final journey to France. The subtitle I ncidents at Ebrington Barracksgives an indication of how the piece is structured; around the inspections, drills, camaraderies and conflicts that give shape to the soldiers' daily routines. Director Catríona McLaughlin uses marching movements and popular song to make transitions and to evoke a sense of time passing.

But Ledwidge is no ordinary soldier. Or so the premise of Duggan’s play suggests; within the hierarchical structures of the army, his poetry gets in the way of politics, and hampers his ability to lead his men. The biographical detail elicited includes the conflict between Ledwidge’s nationalist certainties and his ethical imperatives in fighting the war, as well as his relationship with his patron Lord Dunsany and his fellow poet-revolutionaries in Dublin.

Duggan crams as much of Ledwidge’s verse as he can into the play too – both improvised doggerel and his longer-studied poems. And yet despite the vivid choreography of the final scene and some excellent performances, the piece never quite comes to life as drama. Until Saturday. Then Balor Arts Centre, Ballybofey, March 9; An Cultúrlan, Belfast; March 11-12; Ebrington Barracks, Derry, March 13-14