Draft talk:A Question of Duty (play)
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A Question of Duty (play)
editA Question of Duty is a two-act play about duty, sacrifice, loyalty and identity, set aboard General Dwight D Eisenhower’s ‘mobile war room’, his top-secret train on which he travelled the U.K. and northern Europe planning the North Africa campaign and D-Day. It examines the relationship between Eisenhower and his Anglo-Irish British military driver turned aide, Kay Summersby, as seen through the lens of the train’s permanent Sergeant, the young Londoner, Albert Phillips. Written by Gary Tippings, the play premiered at the regional Watersmeet Theatre, Rickmansworth. These initial performances were directed by Tama Matheson, son of the one-time Covent Garden opera conductor, John Matheson.
Plot
editThe play’s action takes place inside Eisenhower’s office carriage on ‘Train Alive’, his top-secret train. Set during the evening of December 12th 1944, a meeting with the British military’s Field-Marshal Alan Brooke and Colonel James Gault (with Eisenhower’s aide Kay Summersby taking minutes) comes to an end, and Eisenhower opens a special single-malt whisky that he has been saving for the moment he can finally see that the allied forces have a ‘clear path to victory’. Brooke has just returned from a meeting in Tehran with Stalin’s representative, General Suslaparov, with the news that the rumour that Stalin was intent on annexing Germany as a whole, is just that, only a rumour.
As the senior military figures retire to their rooms on the train for the night Eisenhower persuades Sergeant Albert Phillips to sit and drink the special bottle of whisky with him. They relax and chat, but as the night progresses they are occasionally interrupted as news come in of the first assembly of German troops near the Ardennes (which eventually developed into “The Battle of the Bulge’, the last major German offensive campaign of the war). With a background of the escalating news from the Ardennes, and as the whisky takes effect, Ike at first explores Albert’s background and upbringing in more detail, but also begins to open up on his own life story for the first time. The first act ends with Ike revealing that Major Glenn Miller, who Ike had asked to join the European campaign in order to entertain the troops, was, like Albert, indeed a member of SHAEF, General Eisenhower’s command team. Ike promises to arrange a meeting between the two in Paris when Major Miller transfers to France in a few days’ time, a flight that we learn never reached its destination.
At the opening of the second act Kay outlines how the war has forcibly changed women’s roles in the workplace, and at every level of British society, for good. As the act progresses there are moments when Ike and Kay are alone, where Kay reminisces about their time spent in Africa together, where the romance between them blossomed. Near to the end of the night Ike confesses to Albert when they are alone that he has, as the rumours have suggested, indeed fallen in love with Kay. He seeks Albert’s down-to-earth, no-nonsense take on the relationship, Albert having witnessed Eisenhower and Summersby up close on the train, and after Eisenhower has listened to Albert’s own struggles with his failed relationship with Margaret. Margaret had ended her romance with Albert as he had refused to tell her what his role was in the war, bound as he was by an order of confidentiality, insisted upon by the British military leaders who sought him out for the role having been made aware of his history of working with trains, his humility, and his aura of confidentiality (‘I’m not one for gossip and all that’).
The play ends with Albert unsure of what the future holds for him, but buoyed, having been given permission by Ike to tell Margaret that he is part of SHAEF, with the potential for that revelation to repair his broken relationship. Kay is left unsure of Ike’s intentions, having noticed a shift in his mood as the night has progressed, but excited at the prospect of her imminent American citizenship that President Roosevelt is arranging for her. Ike’s story ends with him outlining the toll that leading the Allied Forces has taken on his marriage and his sanity, and deliberating the romantic ‘flower of passion’ represented by Kay as contrasted with the ‘gem of fidelity’ that is his relationship with his wife, Mamie, and struggling with the fact that the future that he previously thought he wanted was merely a House of Cards.
Production history
editRegional theatre (2025)
The play premiered at the Watersmeet Theatre, Rickmansworth on 25th July, with an additional performance on 26th July. The production was designed by Gary Tippings and directed by Tama Matheson. The cast included David G Sayers as General Eisenhower, Muireann Gallen as Lieutenant Kay Summersby, Oliver Holland as Sergeant Albert Phillips, Robert Maskell as Field-Marshal Alan Brooke, and the director Tama Matheson playing Colonel James Gault. Forestpod (talk) 07:46, 3 September 2025 (UTC)