Nicola Lisle asks leading actor Philip Arditti all about his role in the upcoming Catch-22

Call it what you like — catch-22, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea — it all comes down to the same thing. No matter what you do, you can’t win.

This sense of being trapped in an impossible situation is the main thrust of Joseph Heller’s 1961 satirical anti-war novel, Catch-22, which highlights the absurdity, illogicality and futility of war.

It was adapted for the stage by Heller himself in 1971, and is now being given its first UK tour by Northern Stage, previously seen at the Playhouse in Blue Remembered Hills and Close the Coalhouse Door.

At the tail-end of the Second World War, iconic anti-hero Captain John Yossarian, a bombardier with the US Army Air Force, is so desperate to avoid any more flying missions that he decides to plead insanity, but is prevented from doing so by the twist of logic that lies at the heart of the novel: “If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.” In other words, catch-22.

An additional irony is Yossarian’s obsession with surviving the war becomes, in its own way, a kind of madness, while at the same time he is a lone voice of sanity in a crazy world of endless fighting.

“He’s trying to make sense of it, and gets traumatised by having to fight so many missions,” says actor Philip Arditti, who plays Yossarian.

“In the book, Colonel Cathcart wants to be a general, so he keeps upping the number of missions and volunteering his groups for these really dangerous missions, and he doesn’t care if people die — it means nothing to him. But of course somebody has to fly those missions, and those people are the young men, one of them being Yossarian, and he’s trying to make sense of it.

“Essentially the book is about this twist of logic, of being stuck within the system. Increasingly Yossarian sees himself as crazy because he’s the only one whose natural humanity disables him from engaging with that twist of logic.

Oxford Mail:

Fighting talk: Victoria Bewick and Philip Arditti

“I think he’s an impulsively human person, and he can’t engage with the rhetoric. Rhetoric is what we have to tell these people to go and fight, and as it goes on he becomes incapable of engaging with that rhetoric. And of course he turns out to be the crazy one because he’s the only one who doesn’t say yes, we’re going to fight and we might die.”

For Philip, the success of Catch-22 lies in the fact that it is based so closely on Heller’s own experiences. “Heller himself was a bombardier in the Second World War, and he did several missions to the south of France and various locations in the northern Mediterranean. So he has his own very personal and, I understand from the interviews that I’ve watched, very vivid, shocking and horrible accounts of his own experience, which he carried straight into the book.

“The reason why the book is so successful — although it’s been criticised technically — is that in terms of its characters it’s so vivid. So when you read the book or play the characters they are real people he’s observed, and to whose logic he’s been subjected.”

More than 50 years after publication, the book still has strong resonances for today’s readers. “On a wider reading of the story, it is the plight of anyone having to deal with the system,” Philip believes. “I think it’s possible to learn about what our relationship is to any kind of system.”

It all sounds a bit grim, but there is humour and even hope in this depiction of crazy bureaucracy, and award-winning director Rachel Chavkin has livened up this production with period music and dancing.

“I think Rachel’s done a good job of putting Heller’s version onto the stage and the company does a great job,” says Philip. “I think the audience enjoys seeing those characters, both people who have read the book and people who haven’t.”

For Phillip and the rest of the company, the play has been hugely challenging. “It’s a really large world to take in, in terms of its language and imagination. The action takes place on a small imaginary island called Pianosa, but of course this island is far too small to encapsulate and hold all the things that happen in the book.

“Essentially, the idea is that it’s a huge world, both in its imagination and its metaphor, the relationship between the people and the system, and between Heller himself and the language; all of that is very rich.

“That’s a massive challenge for everybody involved. Apart from me, all the company play several characters, at least three or four each, so we’re really stretched theatrically as far as possible, to put over a slice of this multi-coloured, multi-layered world that Heller created.”

Where & When
Catch-22
Oxford Playhouse 
Tuesday to Saturday
Tickets: 01865 305305 or www.oxfordplayhouse.com