If you like your comedy black you will enjoy Song of the Western Men, a play commissioned by Chichester Festival Theatre and written by Cornish playwright Christopher William Hill in 2002. The time is April 1939. The place, St. Martin’s, Isles of Scilly.

As you enter the Minerva you are aware of a coffin centre stage, with three black suited men sitting in the parlour observing it. To get to your seat you have to cross the beach of sand and shells beneath a Perspex floor. When the lights dim you are aware of the sound of the lapping sea; and a ticking clock. A long silence is broken with, “I spy with my little eye something beginning with C”. The audience burst out laughing and the fast moving, delightfully humorous play was away. There are seven short cameo scenes in both Act one and Act two depicting the parlour, the post office cum corner shop and the beach.

The story opens just before the funeral of Mr Clemmow, the island post-master. We meet Tommy Trenear and son Ben, shop-keeper and boatman; Mary and Vic Oliver, the deceased’s daughter and son-in-law who is now the reluctant new post-master; Grace Clemmow, the widow and cantankerous mother; the Reverend Tregarthen the anything for a quiet life vicar; the young Jack Oliver and Morwenna May, the love element; and the dashing Frank Gunwallow, the General Post Office official sent from the mainland to install a new telegraph machine and to check the Post Office paperwork.

St Martin’s is a tight knit island community untouched by the outside world, apart from the regular shipwrecks, and reluctant to get too involved in progress. Act one is full of light hearted quick fire banter and much laughter from the audience. We get to know the characters and start to understand their frustrations, especially Morwenna’s undelivered mail order encyclopaedias. The main storyline revolves around the new telegraph machine and the checking by Frank of the Post Office paperwork. Act two shows us the darker side of their lives. Vic is reluctant to co-operate with the new telegraph machine. He refuses to deliver telegrams and in the end sabotages the machine, throwing it into the sea. It’s near the end of the play that we discover the reason for his actions and the lasting affect that the receiving of a telegram about the death of his brother in World War I had on him and his family. Vic is also trying to protect the island from any involvement in the imminent Word War II.

Morwenna May, energetically played by Samantha Robinson, is a teenager anxious to be kissed. She desperately tries to encourage Jack to have more interest in her than “his damn boat” which he spends all his time renovating. Although Jack, Dominic Colenso, is secretly planning to propose to Morwenna he tends to resist her direct advances. This results in Morwenna trapping mainland Frank into kissing her and then telling Jack. He is so upset he throws the ring into the sea and goes off in his boat. Unknown to him Morwenna has loosened a bung as a joke and during the storm he drowns.

Frank played by Christopher Naylor, is blamed for the death and Ben the boatman refuses to take him back to Plymouth. He too has death on his mind. He is distraught at being trapped on the island and also at not being able to persuade Vic to use the new telegraph machine. Following its destruction by Vic we see Frank drunk on the beach attempting to commit suicide by drowning. However, he is talked out of it in a humorous way by Tommy played by Stuart Fox, Ben, played by Dugald Gunn, and Reverend Tregarthen played by Peter Baldwin.

Telegrams and call up letters are not the only items held back by Vic. He has been studying the eighteen volumes of the Children’s Encyclopaedia that Morwenna had ordered some eighteen months previously and kept going on about it during the play. This led to a very profound philosophical, religious discussion between Vic and the Reverend.

A very entertaining and at times thought provoking play which is likely to become a firm favourite with Repertory companies and audiences around the country. Well worth a visit. © JMB

“Song of the Western Men” is at the Minerva theatre Chichester from the 14th of August until the 7th of September, 2002.