Much Further Out Than You Thought

• Eddie Harrison
• 13 August 2015

This article is from 2015

Sombre and sometimes brutal account of PTSD

Actor Giles Roberts bites the bullet in intense fashion as Lance Corporal James Randall, a soldier fighting an uphill battle with post-traumatic stress disorder. As he sits watching a Remembrance Sunday service on television, Randall experiences painful flashbacks to his harrowing tour of duty, juxtaposed with equally distressing thoughts about how his domestic life has been influenced.

Much Further Out Than You Thought is a grim monologue, determined to involve the audience in one man’s experience of war. The problem is that most of Randall’s story seems too familiar, and that despite the powerful quality of Roberts’ performance, the show reprises too many of the clichés about the problems of a returning soldier. The additional personal tragedies Randall suffers take the production over the top in the wrong way, complicating the narrative and taking the focus away from his difficulties adjusting to ordinary life. There’s a compelling narrative to be told here, but it’s buried among predictably bleak sentiment and lashings of bathos.

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