Casualties

“Being on a tightrope is living, everything else is waiting.”

When Gary Maddocks rejoins Mike Evans and his Counter IED Team in Afghanistan he is pleased. He has been finding life back home with Emma dull and is impatient to get back to the job he loves, but if he had known what fate had in store for him would he have been so eager? Of course he would: it's like an addiction, and if your luck runs out there's nothing you can do about it, is there? But was it bad luck, faulty equipment, or something worse? Mike has been acting strange lately and Emma appears to be hiding something.

When you step on a pressure plate you think you hear the click, or you think you feel it, but you don't know for sure. And you can't know because what you remember . . . well some of it isn't real.

Ross Ericson's play Casualties explores how love, friendship and truth are not so certain in the context of war.