On the eve of the First World War the young men of Accrington hear Kitchener’s call for a New Army and become the smallest town in England to raise a Pals Volunteer Brigade. When they arrive in France, the brutal reality of the trenches is beyond anything they were prepared for. And back home amongst the women they leave behind – their mothers, wives, daughters, lovers – nothing can ever be the same again.

 

While the story itself is fiction, the background is reality. The Pals were formed and fought just as they are described as doing in the play. It looks at the story of the innocent and enthusiastic men who volunteered their services to their country. Their experiences of life on the Western Front are contrasted with the women who are left behind in Accrington, women who come together as friends and thrown into the social changes that came along with the absence of many men. The main characters, too, are contrasted; May, as independent, hard-working, fruit and veg stall holder, Tom, her lodger, as optimistic and idealistic and Eva, May's trusted and generous confidante and sweetheart of the laddish Ralph. The play has fun and light-hearted moments, which are starkly contrasted with the terrifying reality hundreds of men faced at the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

 

Peter Whelan’s epic and deeply humane play dramatises the lives of ordinary people caught up in historical events. Funny, intimate and moving ‘The Accrington Pals’ charts the fortunes of the young men of Lancashire who leave their homes and lovers for the trenches of the Somme. A moving and often comic evocation of the suffering of the women they left behind.