The Wheel

Examining the harsh insanity of life in a war-zone and the devastating impact it has upon ordinary people, The Wheel is the latest production from the National Theatre of Scotland and the exciting young playwright Zinnie Harris. It is a powerful, intense and mysterious allegorical drama that seeks to cast light on the very darkest elements of human nature.

Opening amid a Franco-Spanish conflict from a pre-industrial age, The Wheel follows one peasant girl and a rag-tag collection of young children as they chase across a series of devastated landscapes. As they travel, each new group of soldiers they encounter are echoes from different and distant eras: peasants with pitchforks, scarred veterans of the Somme’s trenches, Nazi uniforms and Vietnam-era American GIs. It is a clever and effective way of showing that, although times might change, human nature remains violently the same.

Special mention should be given to beautiful staging and the superbly strong cast, in particular The Wheel’s youngest stars. The starkness of their vulnerability—expressed powerfully through their silent minimalist performances—makes the horror of war feel all the more potent.

However, almost all The Wheel's merit is in its allegorical aspiration. Indeed, at face value, its plot development can be messy, requiring sometimes massive leaps of faith from the audience. But the message is an important one: each generation is shaped by the environment it grows up in, and a callous, violent world breeds callous, violent people.

As fires burn across some of our country’s great cities, this is a pertinent message indeed.