PETER Whelan's play Accrington Pals tugs at the heart strings one minute and then provides comic relief the next.
The Phoenix Theatre Company present their new production of the play from April 21 to 24 at the Chorley Old Road Methodist Community Church.
Set in Accrington during the first two years of the Great War, the play shows how the "Pals", the men from the local volunteer battalion, march off to war in high spirits.
Their grim experiences in the trenches contrast with those of the women left behind who are adapting to new patterns of life and drawing together in the face of social and sexual deprivation.
In particular, the attitudes of May, the hard-working and strong-minded vegetable-stall holder are compared with those of her idealistic and naively optimistic lodger, Tom, and also with those of Eva, her generous hearted friend.
Alan Macpherson directs Samantha Taylor, Alison Partington, Jacky Gill, Robin Thompson, Paul Walker, Jonathan Simmons, Carolyn Haslam, Emma Barlow, Martin Pearce and James Haslam.
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