Playing at The Lion and Unicorn’s attic, Voices is a two-handed account of the ever-remembered Great War. Tissues at the ready, I strapped myself in for overwhelming waves of remembrance and respect to be rekindled.

Voices poetically pieces together personal accounts, memoirs and poems gathered from soldiers and survivors. As a subject, the First World War is as current and relevant to society as ever. Not that it relies upon that in any way shape or form; it is a historical event that is so human that it stands alone in solidarity. Its standing in the present is eye-opening, we wonder why, after so many inhumane deaths a hundred years ago, that war still exists as a core and brutal part of our society. In its historical context, I wondered what new and stimulating narratives Voices could offer in its telling of well-trodden no man’s land.

To be honest, there wasn’t much in the way of newness. The anecdotes, poems and ditties are more pieces that shed light on existing memories and affiliations. The personally insightful and angry poems of Sassoon and Owen are elevated from the pit of over-hammed boredom that is GCSE English and restored to their former meaning in Voices. Benefiting from being surrounded by context and personality, the ugly beauty and reality of them offered up on a plate that is impossible to shy away from.

These dark delves into the past are set against a sparse backdrop, consisting of a wooden table and two chairs. The floor is scattered with rolled-up, un-smoked cigarettes and A4 paper, fit for a laser-jet printer but odder in the environment of soldier’s writing their last letters home. This was not as odd as a large Fortnum and Mason hamper that found itself at the back of every image. I’m a bit anal when it comes to attention to detail; a play never needs to be dependent on its set, so if it sticks out like a sore thumb then it shouldn’t be there.

The play opens in complete darkness, until Richard Zanik enters and lights a moody candle in the middle of the table, well and truly creating an atmosphere for Zanik and Anthony Cord to begin a ‘game of ghosts’, surfacing stories of the dead. Much of Stuart Clarke’s text is written in verse which is beautiful in places, constructing evocative imagery; “all asleep, three men deep”, but inaccessible in others, particularly because the performances became almost enslaved to the rhythm as opposed to the meaning. Zanik seemed to attribute more emphasis to the rhyming words than to the inherent emotion. The narrative is pacy and changes direction as it leaps from anecdote to anecdote, but the links between each are slightly tenuous, making it difficult to understand whose story we were hearing at any one time or how to empathise. This was contorted further as the actor’s emotions didn’t always fit with the story they were telling. A jarring example of this was when Owen’s iconic line, “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”, was delivered jovially through a snigger.

Overall I felt a lack of emotion. The stories told are explosive, deeply rooted in humanity and in each one of our histories. Clarke’s construction is darkly moving as it thunders along with rhythm and precision. The detachment comes solely from how it is told.

Voices is playing at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre until 25 April. For tickets and more information, see The Lion and Unicorn Theatre website.