As the final notes of The Last Post fade, Katherine MacAlister finds an opportune moment to talk with actor Stephen Boxer, starring in Regeneration at Oxford’s Playhouse

With the trumpet notes of Armistice Day’s Last Post fading in our ears, it’s a prescient time to be bringing Regeneration to Oxford’s Playhouse.

Based on Pat Barker’s award-winning book, the adaptation zooms in on the relationship between shell-shocked poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon and army psychiatrist Dr William Rivers, set in Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917.

“Sassoon was protesting about the way the war was being conducted and was in danger of being sent to prison or shot, so instead they sent him to Craiglockhart as a mental patient,” actor Stephen Boxer explains.

“He feels he is a soldier but that the war was being conducted by idiots so his sense of duty is at cross purposes with his liberalism.

“Although it’s a subtle play, this is about the consequences of war, and how to deal with them, and from Sassoon’s point of view he is an honourable man.”

As Dr Rivers, Stephen is revelling in the psychology of the WWI play, a part he has been coveting since first reading the classic book back in the 1990s.

“There was a spark even then at the back of my mind about playing Rivers if the opportunity ever arose, so when the script arrived on my doorstep, I jumped at the chance,” he said.

So what was the attraction? “Rivers’ dilemma is that he’s such a successful doctor he regenerates his patients too quickly meaning they can then be sent back to the front to become cannon fodder. So River has his own demons to fight.”

The play therefore makes for difficult viewing at times: “There is a horrible electroshock treatment scene which was effective with mutism, a common form of shellshock. So while we don’t actually go to war in Regeneration there is a strong sense of what it was like,” Stephen explains.

“But it makes a wonderful change from having my eyes gouged out on stage every night,”

Having recently completed a stint in Sam Mendes’ King Lear, hence the gouging, and the RSC’s Titus Andronicus, Stephen is nonetheless delighted with the softer nuances of the WWI drama. “This gets the message across in a much more delicate way and I like the contrast,” he said.

Having been a chorister in Oxford as a schoolboy and a Magdalen College School scholarship pupil, he can’t wait to get back to Oxford: “My parents were good lower-middle class and aspiring for their children.

“My mother grew up in a council house and took elocution lessons to become a telephone operator but she also produced the Cookham pantos every year which my father wrote, so I didn’t have to fight too hard to get into my chosen profession and I’m very grateful for that,” the 64-year-old said.

“But that’s what I love about plays and drama and what keeps me hanging in there, because for me it’s not about being an extrovert, it’s about having something to say, and gives you a wonderful structure for expression – much easier than in life itself, because you are telling a story, whether it’s a kitchen sink drama or Shakespeare.”

Also well known for his role in TV soap Doctors, Stephen says he loves the “constant stimulation” of acting.

“I’ve become a historical magpie. The last time I was in Oxford I was in the play God and Stephen Hawking, so for six weeks I knew all about black holes and the sting theory.

“But a play about psychology in WWI, is just as interesting.

“It’s much more fun to swing between the two.”

SEE IT
Regeneration is at Oxford Playhouse from Tuesday until Saturday. 
Call the box office on 01865 305305 or visit oxfordplayhouse.com

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