A Pebble of Innocence

Hamp, by John Wilson. The idea of trial is one of the touchstones of drama. In some sense, Oedipus and Antigone, Hamlet and Macbeth are all on trial for their lives and are tested by the ordeal of life. Hamp is not even remotely a protagonist on this grand tragic scale: a World War I private from the British North Country, he has deserted in battle and is to stand court-martial. But in catching a mirror image of existence in the features of a frightened boy, Playwright Wilson raises questions that have disturbed and puzzled men since war began.

The lawyer-lieutenant (Michael Lipton) chosen to defend Hamp is aloof, yet earnest, and thoroughly determined to help him. But Hamp (Robert Salvio) is hard to help precisely because he is a simple soul of truth, a pebble of innocence without a tongue-wag of self-protective deviousness in his nature. He ran away, he tells his lawyer and the court, because one day the mud-and-blood bath of battle got to be too much for him. He doesn't have the foggiest idea if he ever intended coming back to his outfit. All he knows is that he desperately wanted to go home. It is an affecting, truthful defense, but the law gives Hamp's military judges no option; he dies before a firing squad.

Based on a novel by J. L. Hodson that Director Joseph Losey two years ago turned into a stirring film called King and Country (TIME, Oct. 1, 1965), Hamp, in this off-Broadway production, derives its tension and strength from a conflict between two goods, not between good and evil. Duty and discipline are obviously good and necessary in wartime, when communal responsibility is essential. On the other hand, mercy shown is also good, and morally imperative; none is shown to Hamp. As he says, softly and pitiably, "It were only the first time, sir." Here the playwright opens the play to the book of life itself. Life is always "only the first time" for every man, and, for all its late and early joys, he pays with a hundred trials and a hundred deaths. Hamp's death is a metaphor, not only for death in war but for death in the undeclared war of life.

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