The Valentine Letters by Steve Darlow based on Gepruft by Frances Zagni. The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, 408 Brockley Road, London SE4 to 22 June 2024.

3✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Moving look at a world long gone.”

Fine performances by Tom Hilton and Katie Hamilton as John and Frances Valentine make this play based on the correspondence between them during the war – he was in the RAF, a Bomber Command navigator, was shot down and ended a prisoner of war, she had their daughter Frances and coped with life alone back home – a deeply interesting and moving look at a world long gone. While John is training after being called up he sends his washing home, she mends his socks, he is a man faced with doing what a man then did not do, while she does what wives then must do and somehow provide for their man. The world changed after the war, and was to change again in the years since then. This was an age when letters mattered. The play has been neatly put together by Steve Darlow although dramatically it might work better if a little shorter and without the interval hence the three stars. The performances really deserve four.

Their correspondence was saved by both of them and years later Frances, helping her father move house, found it and asked what should she do? He said keep it. The result was the book Gepruft – and in due course this play which has been on tour before coming to the Brockley Jack. It is narrated by Frances, nicely played by Katie Hamilton, and John and Ursula take turns to reveal the content of their letters. Tom Hilton – maybe a wartime haircut would have been an idea – is John coping with barrack room life, with flying on bombing raids, trying to learn to play the violin when he ends up a prisoner of war, and asking for all sorts of things to be send in the Red Cross parcels. Strings for the violin, a teach yourself to play music book. As Ursula Katie Hamilton captures the refined speech of the time perfectly as she tells him how to wash his socks and darns them, sends parcels, which probably used up lots of coupons about which he has no idea, and copes with buying a house and raising their daughter.

It does end happily although John was very ill when he was released from the prison camp, but he did recover and they had more children. It is a heart warming tale, but it is also one which brings a forgotten past to life.

CharlotteDrummond-Dunn – Frances.

Katie Hamilton – Ursula.

Tom Hilton – John.

Director – Jo Emery.

Lighting and Technical – Dorian Brock.