For the men in the 36th Ulster Division, there will be no surrender. Their battles must continue to kick and scream and draw blood: from the Battle of the Boyne, to the Battle of the Somme, to the battles with their own truths, fears and loyalties.

Frank McGuinness’s brutal and disturbing powerhouse Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme rages and pounds onto the stage at The Cambridge Arts Theatre with astonishing ferocity and devastation. Set in 1916, in the lead-up to the infamously disastrous battle, McGuinness presents us with the lives of eight men from Ulster who are brought together not only by the Great War, but by their own even greater wars with themselves, with their country, with their pasts.

The inevitability of the outcome looms large from the start: the spectres and nightmares of the events are summoned up by the only survivor, looking back in the isolation and anger of his old age.
 

We see these army volunteers through their first meeting, as they jostle to establish power and position: but the truth they are all aware of is that their ranking in military life is at the bottom of the pile, and that they will never be at ease again until they leave the army. But their default tactics of vicious male aggression cannot cope with the enigmatic mind-games and subtlety of Pyper (played with unsettling mania by Donal Gallery) who runs rings around them. He is the outsider, the freak, the truth-teller whose prophecies of doom are destined to be ignored.
 

The setting is dark and bleak, with disorientatingly thrown perspective framing the claustrophobia of the action. Designed by Ciaran Bagnall, with lighting by Paul Keogan, the staging is truly theatrical: evoking an unreal and harsh location for the body and the mind. We can feel the soldiers’ physical discomfort, and their distance from everything familiar.

Every moment of the poetry and richness of the writing is lived with fierce sincerity by the extraordinarily honest cast. These men are not reciting lines: they are speaking from the heart and from the fire in their bellies. When Paul Kennedy as McIlwaine cannot find a way to express the enormity of the turmoil he is witnessing, we are presented with an outpouring of power and energy, and attention is indeed paid. This hard and violent Belfast ship-builder has hammered rivets into the Titanic: Kennedy proves that as an actor he has the strength and force to tear into our minds and hearts with even greater force. The gentler and less self-assured Moore (Chris McCurry) allows his fears to build and possess him; his deterioration is tender and unsettling, and the glances of the man he was before the army return towards the end show the bitter destruction caused without there being a single physical mark.

Jeremy Herrin’s directing is relentless and virile: the pacing and the rhythm are flawless: the anger, the emptiness and the fear build throughout. We know it cannot end well for anyone: but he doesn’t let us forget it for a second. Even the few moments of comic relief are gallows humour at its darkest. The second act jigsaw of overlapping dialogues is a masterclass in timing and focus.

McGuinness deals unflinchingly with masculinity, male interactions, and violence of every level. His directness in depicting hatred expands the play beyond the Great War, or the Ulster Orangemen: his characters eat into the hatred for themselves, for God (and gods), their families and for life itself.  Their moments of kindness are tempered with an over-riding worry that real men should not be considerate, should not be unsure, should not be gentle. It is Ryan Donaldson as Craig who lives this inner-conflict to the extreme. A Unionist gun-runner, an army volunteer, and a man; he has enlisted because that is what men do. They fight together to destroy the enemy: be it Irish Fenian or German Hun. Donaldson’s initial depiction gives little away as to the enormity of the humanity that lurks within: but as he builds and exposes the layers, he releases the pain and the truth with heart-breaking elegance and believability.
 

Written over 30 years ago, Observe the Sons of Ulster  is a red-raw and scalding script. “We should be celebrated,” declare the soldiers. And indeed they should. Not perhaps for the conflict, but for this unique production which is a near-perfect piece of modern theatre.