[title]
If there’s one thing the British absolutely bloody love, it’s moaning about the weather. And if there is another thing the British absolutely bloody love it’s the Second World War, which apparently We Won.
Actor David Haig’s self-written play ‘Pressure’ manages to impressively combine the two, being an account of the days leading up to the Normandy Landings, during which rival British and American weathermen argued over exactly when D-Day should be.
General Eisenhower (Malcolm Sinclair) is keen that the invasion should occur on Monday, June 5, 1944, and is assured by his countryman Col Krick (Philip Cairns) that the current good weather will hold. But the Brits’ best man, the softly spoken Scottish meteorologist Captain James Stagg (Haig) thinks he can spy danger.
It’s kind of the Second World War equivalent to ‘Rogue One’: we know how things turn out, and realistically these events are just a footnote. But the sizeable franchise fanbase are liable to enjoy it, especially as we get a sprinkling of historical big beasts, notably Sinclair’s bluff Eisenhower, and Laura Rogers as his super-efficient British attaché Kay Summersby (who rumours persist the General had an affair with).
Haig’s inexperience as a playwright does show a bit. The whole thing could do with a dramaturgical kick up the arse, especially the first 45 minutes or so of John Dove’s production, which mostly consists of people shouting ‘DAMMIT’ whilst looking at weather maps. Though the characters benefit from Haig having done his homework, there’s an underlying thinness, especially to Summersby – preposterously saintly – and Eisenhower – a 2-D brash Yankee (their putative romance feels shoehorned in, rather than examined).
And yet Haig’s relatively simplistic approach has propelled this production to the West End after opening at the Park Theatre a couple of weeks ago. Where a more jaded writer might have felt obliged to tie themselves up into convoluted moral and symbolic knots about the whole thing, Haig just knuckles down and tells a little-known story straightforwardly, with feeling.
As decision time approaches, and emotions fray, the tension finally builds. The title is revealed to have several meanings: the obvious meteorological one, but also the blood pressure of Stagg’s unseen wife, who is about to go into a dangerous labour. All this ramps up the emotional pressure on the initially self-contained Stagg. It pays dividends: Haig’s speciality as a performer is pushing on while looking like he’s on the edge of a breakdown. Here, he wrings it for pathos rather than the usual laughs, and he becomes increasingly magnetic as he does so, a man pushing on beyond all sensible endurance in once-in-a-lifetime circumstances.
In all honesty, you’ll probably enjoy ‘Pressure’ exactly as much as you expect you will. It’s an old-fashioned show with a large, entirely white cast telling a story about plucky Brits and impetuous Yanks triumphing over the odds. But it’s also got a big, beating human heart, and a deft avoidance of actual jingoism. James Stagg may well have saved Europe, and his story deserves to live on.