Soldiers’ Wives

The world of the army base is a tight knit one, according to this piece by Sarah Daniels: one rife with gossip, rivalry and class hierarchy, but tight knit none the less. Like any family, it may be occasionally stifling but it’s always supportive, and in times of need, it’s all you have to cling to.

Daniels portrays all this in Soldiers’ Wives, a monologue in which Catherine Shipton plays five women on an army base, dealing with everyday life and the stress of having a husband at war. Seguing between the five parts with ease, Shipton begins as Lucy, the well-to-do wife of a Major, who, reflecting her husband's rank, is boss of the base. Ruby, the wife of a low ranking soldier, cleans Lucy’s house; Kate, the base’s beauty therapist, does her hair. Then there’s Anne, a Sergeant’s wife struggling to cope, and Sue, whose husband is in hospital following an incident in Afghanistan which affects them all. “I didn’t pull rank,” says Lucy, when rebuffed by Sue.

With few props and no costume changes, Shipton switches between characters using body language and voice, each wife talking directly to us as though we’re a visitor to the base. Shipton is highly watchable, and deals deftly with some touching moments in Daniels’ script, such as Anne’s distress on assuming that a visit from the pastor means the worst.

This isn’t groundbreaking theatre, but offers an interesting insight into a world few of us know much about, where the best you can do is wait, hope and deal with the consequences.