david yelland in for king and country Everyman Theatre, Regent Street, Cheltenham March 3 to 7 Tickets: £10 01242 572573.

A LANDMARK play set in the First World War is coming to Cheltenham as part of an important revival.

For King And Country by John Wilson stunned audiences when it was first performed in 1964, making a star of a very young John Hurt in the process.

Set among the British trenches, the play follows the military trial of a young soldier who simply walks away from battle after his entire battalion is killed.

When first performed, the war was still within living memory, but now it’s almost a century distant, so does it still have relevance?

Distinguished actor David Yelland, who plays the president of the court, certainly thinks so.

He said: “It has every bit as much to say now as it did when it was first performed in 1964.

“At that time there was a great groundswell of opinion in relation to the abolition of capital punishment, so the play was relevant to that debate.”

Obviously, that issue is no longer a pressing one as the last British executions were in 1964 and capital punishment was abolished the following year. However, with British troops now fighting in two gruelling conflicts, these days the play has relevance of a different kind.

David said: “There is the whole business of what we expect our people to do on our behalf, and on that basis For King And Country is as relevant as ever - perhaps even more so.”

The issue of putting deserting First World War soldiers on trial for their lives has been in the news in recent years, with campaigners highlighting what happened to victims. It’s tempting to dismiss all those involved in the judicial process as unfeeling monsters, but David believes there was far more to them than that. They were human beings who were small parts of a system intended - misguidedly or not - to preserve order amid horrendous circumstances.

He tries to being a sense of this humanity to his role.

- Barrie Hudson