Lance Corporal F. J. Hedge, of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, plays an important part in the impressive stage adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s best-selling First World War novel Birdsong. His is a name (the only ‘local’ name I spotted) among a seemingly endless roll-call of the dead projected on to the safety curtain in a five-minute pause between the second and third acts of this affecting new play. They are some of the thousands of Britons slaughtered in the Battle of the Somme.

Of the many moving moments delivered on the stage by director Trevor Nunn and his team of first-class actors, this interlude is perhaps the most moving of all. The list is eloquent evidence for the scale of the calamity, and a reminder that it was real people — not characters in a novel or play — who perished.

Faulks is said to be delighted with the adaptation of his novel by Rachel Wagstaff, which condenses the 600-page book into just under three hours of drama. It tells the story of a young man’s visit to the home of a sadistic French factory owner (excellent Nicholas Farrell) in Amiens, the romance that develops between the visitor Stephen Wraysford and the industrialist’s pretty young wife (Genevieve O’Reilly), their elopement and subsequent separation, and Wraysford’s return to the war-ravaged region six years later as an army officer.

Ben Barnes, as Wraysford, rises magnificently to the heavy demands made on him. Rarely off the stage, he serves as narrator as well as prime mover in the action. The switch from ardent wooer to buttoned-up fighting man is tellingly portrayed. That one never finds out what becomes of the character is a necessary consequence of Wagstaff’s (surely wise) decision to excise the parts of the novel in which his granddaughter probes into his life.

The scenes in the trenches are superbly handled. Designer John Napier manages to show most convincingly the tunnels dug by the Sappers beneath the enemy lines (at other times clever projection of pictures and drawings is used to supply location), while the booms and bangs of battle (sound Fergus O’Hare) pound above. Outstanding among the many fine performances is that of Lee Ross as tunneller Jack Firebrace, who brings tears to the eyes with his stoic reaction to sad news from home.

As the centenary of the First World War approaches, the stage has been seeing other reminders of its carnage, including a recent revival (also at the Comedy Theatre) of R. C. Sherriff’s classic Journey’s End and the ongoing success of the National Theatre’s adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s War Horse. Birdsong takes its place in the same fine tradition of drama with a conscience.

n Comedy Theatre, London, until January 15. 0844 871 7622