A small village in Kent, 1919. The Law family, made up of husband Charles, wife Jane and teenage daughter Elsie, are about to play host to their estranged friend Robert and his wife Cynthia. Charles is a hero of the Great War. Robert is a conscientious objector (or "conchy") and has faced the barrage of white feathers and accusations of cowardice for many years. Charles and Jane don't seem to have joined in on this, but they obviously haven't come to his aid either as this is the first time they have spoken for five years. But all is not what it seems in these men's pasts...

All the action takes place in Charles and Jane's dining room. This is brought to us in a sparse but effective set design by Celia Stevenson and Sybil Gillespie which makes the most of the Burton Taylor's limited space. There is also a lovely symbolic motif at the back of the set which fuses together poppies, white feathers and barbed wire.

The actors are pretty solid throughout. However, problems with casting are obvious. Maddy Herbert captures Elsie’s naive militancy to good comic effect, as well as demonstrating that her political views have a hold over her father’s actions, but it is jarringly obvious that she is the same age as the rest of the cast. In a student production there will always be this problem, but a greater effort could have been made to combat it.

Emily Troup, as Jane, started the evening in a rather ungainly fashion; she stumbled over what could have been some very funny awkward exchanges between her and Cynthia. Possibly this was down to first night nerves. But in the play’s darker moments she really found her stride and discovered the array of emotions that go with the play’s big reveals. Tori Mckenna's airy and detached performance as Cynthia is similarly compelling and culminates well at the play's dramatic and sudden conclusion. There is also much to see in the way the antithetical performances of James Colenutt and Jack Wightman complement each other. Colenutt's portrayal of Charles is that of a polished, neat, chiseled and upstanding man. Wightman's performance has a squirmy and dislikeable quality whilst still winning the audience’s sympathy. This leads to some very powerful exchanges between the two characters.

Douglas Grant and Howard Coase's production is an ambitious one, especially as the themes it deals with are so close to that of Pat Barker's Regeneration. It is also not exactly a pleasant watch; you leave feeling you have spent a long time in the company of these characters. But despite the occasional fault there is much to be applauded here. Listening to how soldiers with disfigured faces wear sculpted masks makes for bleak but fascinating viewing.