Cemetery upon cemetery of manicured headstones confronted Alan Bryce around every corner as he drove along quaint country lanes in France.
“I compare it to wine country,” Bryce recalled of his trip to Europe in 2013. “If you go to Napa or Walla Walla, you turn every corner and there’s a winery. But in Somme [a department in France], you turn every corner and there’s a cemetery — they’re everywhere.”
The enormity of all the scenery and research Bryce took in boggled his mind.
He knew 800 boys from his own high school died during the First World War. And there were 1.4 million casualties by the end of the Battle of the Somme – one of the largest battles during the First World War on July 1, 1916 — that was “the bloodiest battle in human history,” said Bryce, artistic director for Centerstage, who has turned his research of the war into a new production.
But nothing was more powerful than when he took a walk one hot summer’s day with a tour guide through the Newfoundland Memorial in Somme.
The guide laid out how the British and French forces attacked entrenched German troops along the River Somme on July 1, 1916. By nightfall that evening, 60,000 British soldiers died. During the second attack wave the next morning, a regiment drawn from the Scottish Isle of Lewis — the 2nd Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders — waited in the reserve trench to die.
Bryce stood where those soldiers crossed the front line and headed to the so-called No Man’s Land, where they trod over the hundreds of dead and wounded who fell during the first wave of the attack the day before. He saw what soldiers referred to as the “danger tree,” a dead tree about 50 yards beyond the British front line.
“It’s about as far from here as the houses across the street,” Bryce pointed out the window out the window towards a residential Federal Way home. “There was 800 men in the Newfoundland regiment who went over [the trench] that day and 90 percent of them didn’t make it to the tree, so that brought tears to my eyes because you’re actually there and you figure out what happened.”
Bryce spent the summer of 2013 in Europe visiting the Somme battlefield, researching at the Imperial War Museum, speaking to leading historians of the First World War period and interviewing scholars, soldiers, ministers and musicians. The native Scot and playwright resolved to tell the Seaforth Highlander’s tale onstage in his upcoming 50th production at Centerstage — “For All That,” which runs from May 1-24.
However, Bryce said he doesn’t want to offer his audience any conclusion about what happened during the Great War. Instead, he tells the story of two Scottish brothers and the woman they both loved.
“If it so happens that one brother was ostracized because he opposed the war and the other was a patriotic volunteer, it is not up to us to tell our audience who did the right thing,” Bryce wrote in his hundreds of research documents that he compiled to offer insight to those working on the production.
His story was also inspired by something that happened between his dad and his dad’s brother, who died during the Second World War flying a Blenheim fighter as the Nazis invaded Greece. Forty years after his brother’s death, Bryce’s father went to Greece and walked to the very spot in the village of Karie where his brother’s plane went down. So the tale of the cufflinks — which Bryce would not elaborate on to keep it a mystery for the show — is rooted in his family’s history.
And while most of the play is fictional, Bryce incorporated some elements of his research.
“There are times when I have found language in a letter that I have incorporated into the script,” he said. “There’s one moment just before the big attack, soldiers are lurking and the Germans have raised a sign saying, basically, we’re all screwed. That particular language on that sign was something that Germans actually did before the attack.”
During his research, Bryce also spoke with people on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, where he married his wife 10 years ago. When he arrived at one woman’s house during his visit there, people in the village dropped by “because she said, ‘I have this theater man from Seattle coming,’” he laughed. “They were really well-informed and they knew their heritage and their history and it was incredibly inspiring speaking with them.”
He also attended a church service where the Scots spoke their native language, Gaelic, because he wanted to hear their music.
He was surprised the congregation didn’t sing hymns or play instruments but chanted songs “in this extraordinary beautiful way,” he recalled.
Five-time Grammy nominee John Forster, who has a Broadway show and two off-Broadway shows to his name, will arrange and compose the music in “For All That,” including some chants Bryce heard at the church.
The New York-based composer, who has worked with Bryce several times in the past, said the majority of music for the production is from the Scottish cannon of folk music, including the well known “Mademoiselle from Armentières.” But some of the music is also contemporary, including Scottish punk, and some original scores that he wrote. Forster also sequenced the sounds of bagpipes on his computer that will be used in “For All That.”
During the show, a four-piece band comprised of a fiddle player, two guitarists and a drummer will play music. Arts enthusiasts who have attended Centerstage productions before will also experience something new during “For All That.”
“We actually have done some sound extension in the theater unlike anything they’ve done before,” Forster noted. “We’re going to have subwoofers and the battle is going to really rattle people’s molars. Technically, we are pushing the envelope here.”
The show, directed by the award-winning Eleanor Rhode, features a first-rate cast, including Katherine Jett, Cooper Harris-Turner, Joshua Williamson and many others.
Bryce said anyone who enjoys a dramatic musical such as “Les Misérables” will enjoy “For All That.”
Forster said this production was challenging for him to work on because of its emotional nature.
“I actually just did a lyric for a song that is in Gaelic that is sung by one of the brothers when he’s in No Man’s Land and he is just pinned down at the Battle of the Somme,” he said. “He can’t raise his head without a sniper firing at him. He gets pinned down at 9 in the morning and there’s nothing to do but wait until night, so he’s just waiting there. And while he’s waiting there he thinks about his wife and there’s this very terrific music and a dramatic situation and to write the lyric, it’s like you have to put yourself in that position … that was a hard one to do emotionally.”
Forster said the show will offer the audience a “stark view” of war in human terms.
“I want no one to leave it feeling, like no matter what your opinions of serving your country are — whether you’re a pacifist, liberal, conservative or military — that you don’t feel somehow alienated by the show,” Bryce added, noting he wants the debate about war to be even. “Although, in the end, there’s no doubt what our feeling about war is.”
More information
“For All That” runs from May 1-24 at the Knutzen Family Theatre. Performances are at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and at 2 p.m. on Sundays. There are 2 p.m. matinees available on May 14 and 23. Tickets are $30 adults; $25 seniors and military; $10 for 25 years and younger. Recommended for 13 years and up.
For more information, visit www.centerstagetheatre.com or call 253-661-1444.
