Synopsis

The sixth play in the Mercer family dramatic cycle. The thoroughly alienated sixteen-year-old Jacob is standing on a railway platform, leaving home. His father Esau, rushes to the station to persuade his son not to leave. Unable to speak of what had happened in the Great War since his return, Esau begins, in halting and tentative language to tell of his comrades and his brother, their training in Scotland, the agony of Gallipoli, and finally the formative events at the battle of the Somme at Beaumont Hamel. Esau's answers evolve into stories of pride, foolishness, anger, desperation, and mindless terror, leaving only the image of a man driven by the blind animal instinct to survive.