Poet Siegfried Sassoon outraged military bosses with his ‘soldier’s declaration’ of 1917 stating that a war of “defence and liberation” had become one of “aggression and conquest”. Seeking to avoid the publicity that a court martial would have brought, the authorities took a way out devised by Robert Graves and sent him for treatment for shell-shock at Craiglockhart military hospital in Edinburgh.

Activities there, which also came to involve Wilfred Owen, another writer synonymous with the First World War, supplied the substance of Pat Barker’s Booker Prize-winning Regeneration trilogy of novels. These have now been shaped by Nicholas Wright, in a masterly act of concision, into two-hours’ traffic of the stage in a thrilling production (director Simon Godwin) for Northampton’s Royal & Derngate. This tours to Oxford Playhouse later in the year and is not to be missed.

Harrowing in its depiction of shattered lives, the play also has much to say about the creative process. From Sassoon, impeccably portrayed by Tim Delap, comes a masterclass in poetry writing as he aids younger writer (and hero worshipper) Owen (Garmon Rhys) in the composition of what became his Anthem for Doomed Youth.

Central to the action is the treatment of kindly Captain Rivers (Stephen Boxer), a psychologist so far ahead of his time that he has read Freud before the translation of his works into English. His ministrations are seen to fine effect in the treatment of Billy Prior (Jack Monaghan), a young officer of working-class background who has been struck dumb by the horrors of the conflict. This contrasts tellingly with the brutal method of electric shock therapy offered by Dr Yealland (Simon Coates).

Regeneration
Royal&Derngate, Northampton
Until September 20
Box office: 01604 624811, royalandderngate.co.uk 

Oxford Playhouse, 
November 18-22
Box office: Call 01865 305305 or visit oxfordplayhouse.com