News: Newcomer Benjamin Cain to debut in Private Peaceful UK Tour

Bristol Old Vic graduate steps into a debut role built on a real pardon campaign

As a primary teacher, Private Peaceful is a book I’d press into hands of my readers who are ready to sit with something that doesn’t look away from what it’s about. So it’s good to see Michael Morpurgo’s novel setting off on a fresh UK tour this autumn, with recent Bristol Old Vic Theatre School graduate Benjamin Cain making his professional debut as Tommo.

The novel follows Tommo Peaceful looking back over his life from a French farmhouse the night before dawn, counting down through his childhood in rural Devon towards a First World War execution. Morpurgo wrote it after learning that around 300 British and Commonwealth soldiers were shot by their own side for offences like desertion and cowardice, several of whom had almost certainly been suffering from shell shock. The book, and the pardon campaign it fed into, played a real part in the eventual pardoning of those men in 2006. Even the family name came from something real: Clare Morpurgo spotted a war grave near Ypres for a “Private T. S. H. Peaceful,” and the couple later learned, after a chance connection through a radio adaptation years later, that the name had actually been misspelled and belonged to a real soldier called Thomas Peacefull.

Simon Reade first adapted the novel into this one-man stage version at Bristol Old Vic in 2004, and made one significant change along the way, so there is still a surprise in store for those who know the book well. It’s since toured the world, played the West End and been filmed with George MacKay and Jack O’Connell. This new production keeps Reade in the director’s chair.

Reade cast Cain after seeing him in his graduating show, calling him “witty, truthful, strong yet vulnerable.” Cain, who grew up in a Dorset village, said he’s “incredibly excited and grateful” to be working with him.

The tour opens in Exeter in September and runs into February 2027, with London performances at Wilton’s Music Hall. Given its place on KS2 and KS3 reading lists, this would be a great one for families though, like War Horse, Morpurgo’s work is usually a delight for adult readers as well.