All Quiet on the Western Front - Vault Festival

Multi-award nominated and award-winning Incognito Theatre Company return to Vault Festival with their critically celebrated sell-out adaptation of Erich Remarque's tale, All Quiet on the Western Front, which delves into the harrowing reality of trench warfare in the First World War.

The piece will play at Vault Festival from 3 to 8 March 2020 - tickets are now on sale (see listing information below).

A group of young friends voluntarily join the German army, with their hearts fuelled by driving patriotism and youthful naivety.

But after training is over and the threat of the front looms, these young men soon realise that the ideals of national glory are nothing more than empty echoes, drowned out by the sound of bombs and raining shrapnel.

In a world wrought with pain and suffering, the boy soldiers desperately cling onto the camaraderie between them, which has become their only source of hope.

Image courtesy Incognito Theatre Company

Incognito Theatre Company's adaptation is gripping and unyielding in its treatment of the visceral reality of war.

With a focus on the vulnerability of human experience, merged with the company's unapologetically explosive physical style, All Quiet on the Western Front highlights the punishing conditions and disorientating chaos of this violent world.

Exploring raw humanity and the power of brotherhood in the face of total bleakness, the piece exposes the personal sacrifices that were made for the sake of the Great War.

With the centenary of the end of WWI in 2018, the 75th anniversary of D-day commemorated in June 2019 and VE Day approaching on the 8th May 2020, All Quiet on the Western Front is as important to perform now as it was in its debut in 2016.

Told from the perspective of German forces, Incognito's refusal to shy away from the emotional turmoil of the boys that went off to fight allows an audience to experience how people struggle to cling to hope and to eachother when faced with unerring destruction.

Incognito's unique theatrical bombast will confront and transport the audience for 60 minutes, being both entertainment and educational.

Writer and performer Charlie MacVicar commented ...

Incognito Theatre Company's adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was developed in 2016, as remembrance for World War One permeated public consciousness more than ever before.

The centenary of the Battle of the Somme and many other major WWI events inspired us to investigate the lives of the men who served on the front line.

Erich Maria Remarque's heart wrenching and widely loved novel offered the perfect framework for us to investigate the shocking pain and the beauty of the friendships formed by those who fought in a war which was vaster and further flung than anything the world had ever seen."

There's more information about Erich Maria Remarque's novel here.

Show listing information