Acentury on from the Christmas truce that brought all too brief a pause in the carnage on the Western Front, the RSC is giving us a gripping, and intensely moving, new play fashioned out of the event.

Firmly based in fact, though with obvious imaginative flourishes, Phil Porter’s two-and-a-half-hour show (director Erica Whyman) is surprisingly long on humour. This could hardly be otherwise, in fact, given its focus on Stratford ‘local’ Bruce Bairnsfather (superbly played by Joseph Kloska), the best-known cartoonist of the war.

We follow this good sort officer and his Warwickshire Regiment colleagues out to Belgium for a vivid picture of life in the trenches. Among the men (in a clear departure from reality) is Bairnsfather’s most famous artistic creation, the walrus-moustached Old Bill (Gerard Horan), whose fearless soldiering-on amid adversity supplies a powerful tonic for the troops.

Meanwhile, a parallel story is being told concerning the well-bred ‘gels’ nursing the injured men. Shall we see a truce of another sort in the struggle between the rigid, rule-following Matron (Leah Whitaker) and the younger ‘angels’ eager to see some welcome festive cheer?

The Christmas Truce 
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
Until Jan 31
Tickets: Call 0844 800 1110 or visit rsc.org.uk