Bomber's Moon is the second play from acclaimed Notts-born screenwriter Billy Ivory.
Back in 2006 I raved about his first offering, The Retirement of Tom Stevens, and together
they are part of the Southwell Trilogy - a series of plays set in Nottinghamshire and exploring
the life of Ivory's father. With the critical success of the first play, my expectations were
very high and I am pleased to say that Bomber's Moon doesn't disappoint.

David is a character from The Retirement of Tom Stevens, played by the same actor, Tim Dantay,
picking up his story a couple of years later. After a breakdown, David has started working in a
care home and meets Jimmy, a former World War Two RAF gunner who is nearing the end of
his life. Jimmy is straight talking, foul mouthed and cynical. David is awkward and nervous,
using phrases straight out of a nurse's training manual in his attempts to connect with Jimmy.
They form an unlikely friendship because they are both trying to deal with a traumatic past.

David's tries to put his marriage break-up and the death of his father behind him while Jimmy's
motto is 'Never Forget' - deal with the past else it will haunt you. Each of them learns a little from
the other's approach. The main theme of the play is faith, both lost and found. Their contrasting
attitudes create a tension between them as Jimmy berates David for his conversion to Catholicism
whilst appreciating how his faith maintains his tenuous grip on sanity. Like Dr Faustus,
Jimmy apparently is determined to reject the chance of salvation that is offered to him.

Paul Greenwood, playing Jimmy, depicts the indignities and frustrations of old age with real skill.
Aside from the excellent acting and the superb direction from Matt Aston, this production features
a great set with excellent sound and lighting design. In flashback sequences, the room in a nursing
home converts cleverly to show Jimmy's turret in a bomber plane. Realistic sound effects help to
recreate the atmosphere of terror and movingly depict the courage of the crew.

Although the play sounds like heavy going, there is a thread of dark and coarse humour throughout
with many laugh-out-loud moments. In brief, this is another triumph from Billy Ivory and best of
all there is still another play in the trilogy to come.

[Adrian Bhagat]

Although it's part two of the trilogy begun with The Retirement of Tom Stevens this stands up
brilliantly as a self-contained play. David, the same character as appears in Tom Stevens,
is again splendidly played by Tim Dantay, recently seen in Joe Egg at the Playhouse.

Alongside a straightforward surface narrative - an old man in a nursing home is being visited by
his male carer - writer William Ivory gives us various levels of complex and skilfully intertwined
revelation. The Lincs/Notts dimension isn't an optional bolt-on; it's integral to the play.

Jimmy (Paul Greenwood) who was a tail-end Charlie on a WWII bomber, has unresolved issues;
and from the start it's obvious that David is also carrying problems around with him. The mysterious
borderlands between homo-eroticism and wartime comradeship and bonding are explored.
And there's a strong religious theme: we get the paradox of belief in a suffering universe;
and one of the men is, unwittingly, an agent of God's grace. Yet it's all done with gritty
realism and black humour.

Greenwood's Jimmy is wicked and seething, an ordinary man lumbered with sexuality in a
failed body. There's poetry in his reveries, not only when he quotes from John Gillespie
Magee's High Flight, but there's realism in his language: "You can get away with f***ing
murder when you're my age", he says.

Sound and lighting effects are powerful. A depressingly realistic and cluttered room in a
nursing home converts to the inside of a bomber during the ill-fated Nuremburg Raid:
the fan on the ceiling becomes a propeller; and - a marvellous touch - a round window
in the door becomes the bomber's moon.

Post-break it's unnecessarily long, but a miraculously bitter-sweet ending is worth the wait.
A Lakeside and LPAC production, this is directed by Matt Aston.

[Alan Geary]

The Stage

This two-hander is the hardest thing in the world to watch but it’s a masterpiece, a portrait of
old age gut-wrenchingly realised by Paul Greenwood as Jimmy, ex-RAF gunner shot down in
the Nuremberg raids.

He’s venomous and foul-mouthed as he rages against his confinement, his impotence, his pills
and suppositories, but he can only be savage from his chair. Once on his feet, he’s tottering
and panic-stricken, entirely dependent on David, his shiny new carer. Tim Dantay is magnificent
as David, comical in his eagerness and terrible in his brokenness.

He does false cheerfulness best of all, and the heart goes out to him as he tries desperately to
please. It’s the shifting dynamic of the two men’s dependence on each other that Ivory explores
with such observation and perception. There are moments of great trust and tenderness and
times when comedy makes tolerable what is almost unbearable.

The screaming tension of the bomber raids is realised in frequent flashbacks, triggered by the
propellers of Jimmy’s ceiling fan and the porthole light of his door. Life since that time has only
been an approximation, and now, at the end of it, he’s faced with the big questions of faith that
have always thrust themselves at him. Pick a religion, any religion, he declares - but in a neat
thread throughout and a twist at the end, it’s not that simple.

The two of them are on stage for a gruelling two and a half hours. It’s endurance for which
they win huge respect.

[Pat Ashworth]

The stage set of Jimmy’s room, featuring biscuit tins and a comfy chair, has been brilliantly
designed by Laura McEwan. Both actors are on stage for 21/2-hours. Such stamina deserves
a huge amount of respect. This is truly a masterpiece.

[LC]