Pushing Up Poppies

As far as it is possible to discern, Pushing up Poppies sets up a farce on the battlefield of World War I and by doing so seeks to explore the maddening tedium of war. It's a production that seems to err on the side of showing rather than doing. It's hard to say what is more infuriating about this production: that it comprises of a tedious collection of hackneyed, unengaging episodes; or that the comedy wouldn't make the cut in a small-town amateur pantomime.

"We should build a fire," opens the play, the childish voice clearly identifying the character as the stock stupid one (we later find out that he is also, predictably, the cowardly one). There's also a funny cockney one, a nice-but-dim posh Englishman and a profound Irishman – whose thickly-spread sermonising on topics such as death evokes next to no pathos. What then follows is an excruciating faux-debate on the merits of building a fire ("But it's dark"; "Well, it's night") and then an even more excruciating exchange in which the name of a dead comrade, "Watts", is hilariously confused for the interrogative, "what?". It's hard not to get the point about the loss of identity in the dehumanising sphere of war. But it's a point made in a way somewhat reminiscent of the Chuckle Brothers, only it's less emotionally engaging.

"All of you stop saying things," shouts one character, Webb, at the end of another pantomime to and fro. It's hard not to agree.