The Accrington Pals, Minerva Theatre, Chicester

Life on the home front

Peter Whelan's latest play, A Russian in the Woods – which is just about to transfer to London from Stratford – offers an intriguing retrospective look at the early and (arguably) deluded days of the Cold War, presented through the experiences of a young Northerner who is posted straight from school to occupied Berlin. Revived now in a beautifully judged and acted production by Edward Kemp at Chichester, Whelan's 1981 play The Accrington Pals is a heart-felt, humorous and harrowing examination of the early and (incontrovertibly) deluded days of the First World War.

The eponymous outfit is the battalion of 700 volunteers from this Lancashire town, who were shipped off to France, with hopes high, to join Kitchener's New Army and which suffered appalling losses at the Battle of the Somme. There are brief, searing glimpses of life at the front, but as is clear from the balance of the juxtaposition on Jane Heather's cobbled, composite design, the primary focus is on another set of "pals'' – the working-class lovers, wives and daughters who were left behind and fed cruelly consoling lies by a press intent on covering up the big wigs' blunders. One climax comes when these women finally determine that "They treat us like children, but we'll not behave like children," and barrack the town hall demanding the facts.

The central figure is May, an ambitious fruit-and-veg stall holder in her late twenties. She is superbly brought to life here by Amy Robbins in a performance that allows the character's censorious drive and good-humouredly embarrassed tolerance to chase each other in utterly convincing circles.

The 1980s provenance of the play is never more apparent than in the somewhat editorialised moments where May argues heatedly about principle with her lodger, Tom (a well cast Richard Glaves), a 19-year-old ex-art student who goes off to fight. She represents proud (slightly profiteering) self-help; the co-operative spirit. The process by which she narrowly fails to respond to Tom's passionate overtures is adroitly plotted, but perhaps May would have been a subtler presence if she had not been created in the era of Mrs Thatcher.

The best scenes are those which imagine the life without men of the racy Accrington mill girls and May's new lodger and friend, Eva (excellent Katherine Kelly). These first-rate vignettes bubble with idiosyncratic comedy and are shadowed by sadness. Take the bibulous all-girl party where frustrated sexpot Sarah (played with a ravishing sense of mischief by Jane Cameron) finds herself touching up a woman partner during a dance. "Well, you've got to cuddle something,'' is the matter-of-fact way Sarah meets the resulting objection. Or there's the talk of where in the husband stakes a man who can't pass the Army medical now stands. "Electricians with asthma don't grow on trees,'' is May's commercially canny response to her friend's convoluted reasons for refusing the poor fellow's offer.

When Eva first comes to Accrington, she tells May that she has always wanted to be where there is a bit of life. "Oh, there's life here,'' replies the older woman. "Only walk up there a few yards and it's falling out of the doorways on you. There's nothing much you can do here, but you're in the midst of life." The Accrington Pals is a wonderful creative corroboration of that statement: it has life in abundance.

To 9 Feb (01243 781 312)