November 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War and the many heroic and tragic stories from that war make natural stories to tell at this time both in remembrance of the loss of life and as a reminder of what that sacrifice was for. Many of the most successful plays are based on the ground war in the Flanders trenches where so many lives were lost and powerfully reveal the ordeal and fear that those men faced.
Billy Bishop goes to war tells a very different true story of a reluctant Canadian calvary man who becomes a very successful pilot in the Royal Flying Corps and eventually gets honoured by the British King with three medals, the Victoria Cross, the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross as the most successful pilot of his generation. The play was written by John Maclachlan Gray who in collaboration with Eric Patterson has also often performed it over the last forty years. However here it is directed by Jimmy Walters with Charles Aitken as the young Billy and Oliver Beamish as his older self.
