Not About Heroes is being staged at The Point

Set in a Scottish war hospital, the play tells the moving story of the real life friendship between First World War poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

It was this profoundly creative and liberating relationship that unlocked Owen’s poetic genius to express the horror and pity of war – a war that claimed his life exactly one week before the Armistice.

Not About Heroes is presented by Theatre Unlimited and is told in a series of flashbacks, narrated by Siegfried Sassoon.

It examines Sassoon’s privileged background and his urgent pacifism, and Owen’s desire to return to the frontline and prove himself ready to die – if only to write of the utter waste of young life.

On what spurred him to write the play, Stephen Macdonald said: “The motive was to try to understand how a relationship that remains at heart mysterious, could leave such an indelible mark on the literature of their war – and so on our understanding of war itself. My best hope is that Not About Heroes might refresh the memory of who these men were and what it was they had to tell us.”

The show begins at 7.30pm on Thursday.

Call 023 8065 2333 or visit thepointeastleigh.co.uk