"Spackman’s impeccable performance is quietly astonishing. The show is directed and adapted by Albert Welling, who assembles a number of rhyming dialect poems by the Rev. Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, an Anglican priest who served in the trenches as a chaplain and later became an outspoken pacifist. 

 

The achievement is impressive on more than one level. For starters, it’s a singular feat of memorization. For another, he manages to perform the material in a way that suggests narrative drive, even though the point is less to tell a story than to convey an experience. He handles the verse in a conversational, realistic style.

 

The simple set suggests a World War I dugout as the nameless narrator recounts the foolishness, folly and fatality experienced by foot soldiers. Some viewers may have to tune their ears to the Cockney dialect in the early going, but Spackman’s delivery and emotional demeanor are crisp and clear throughout.

 

Spackman, a member of the Blackout Theatre Company in Bedford, England, has performed in Kansas City before and his work has always been thoughtful and imbued with a dry sense of humor. This show, however, demands a singular level of discipline and the veteran actor shows that he is easily up to the task."    Robert Trussell Kansas City Star