Falkland Sound
The Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

THIS is a history play, we are told at the opening of Brad Birch’s new work dealing with one of those nasty little wars that have peppered modern history since the end of World War II. 

Apart from around a thousand deaths of British and Argentine soldiers all told, and the usual legacy of lifelong physical and mental injuries, the inevitable consequences of any modern conflict, the only significant results were the fall of the ghastly Galtieri Argentine dictatorship and the regrettable resurrection of the equally ghastly Mrs Thatcher.

Birch’s play touches on the political context, with brief gung-ho comments from UK Spitting Image MPs pontificating on a situation they characteristically know nothing, let alone understand anything, about, but is mainly concerned with the effects on a handful of the few thousand inhabitants of the Falklands at the time. 

The result is a verbatim-style play where composite characters drawn from the playwright’s on-site research first deliver, as he terms it, “up and out” commentaries on the pre-conflict lifestyle and conditions of an isolated bit of Britain, unrecognisable from and by the homeland, 8,000 miles away.

The first half presents an Ambridge-abroad world with a laboured overload of information, on a toytown set with a mini church and houses – no pub! So far there is nothing to distinguish the drama from a rather wooden radio play. 

After the interval, when this halcyon world is shattered by the Argentine invasion and the British Task Force response, Brad Birch and his director, Aaron Parsons, attempt to bring some dramatic action to life. The stress of living through the 74 days of chaos brings out the best and the worst of responses. Heroic defiance is offset by a marriage break-up, an Argentine inhabitant is ostracised, and the lovable old lady slips into dementia. 

To be fair the play does attempt to engage with interesting themes – what is Britishness? who owns a land? — and there are touches of humour. Or, at least it would appear to be so in one islander’s final observation, “it’s going to take a generation to replace all the sheep lost in the conflict.”

Perhaps the mistake here is in trying to invest what has been described as “a petty wretched war” with an epic identity. Brad Birch might go back to Louise Page’s powerful and moving 1983 play with the same title, based on the letters to his wife of Lieutenant David Tinker written shortly before he was killed in action on HMS Glamorgan when hit by an Exocet missile during the conflict.

Runs until September 16. Box office: 01789 331 111, rsc.org.uk