From Siegfried Sassoon to Wilfred Owen – British war poets laid bare the death and devastation of the Great War unlike any history book could.

Their iconic works are entrenched in our national memory – but very rarely do we cast our imaginations to the war poets of abroad.

The UK premiere of Lads In Their Hundreds crosses the English Channel to bring to the stage a rich blend of French wartime poetry.

Tchéky Karyo, recognisable from recent BBC drama The Missing, is enigmatic as an omniscient narrator, reciting 15 of France’s most famous and challenging war poems.

Translations are available for those less confident in their French, though Karyo’s effortless delivery gives a resonance to the macabre and often distressing themes.

The spoken performance is interwoven with music from the period, including songs by Ivor Gurney, delivered by tenor Edmund Hastings.

The stark stage design is made all the more haunting by the evening's musical accompaniments, most notably the bitter sweet violin recital of Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending and the persistent and lingering tones of Beethoven’s Symphony No.7.

As the Great War centenary rolls on, there’s no shortage of creative commemorations taking place in our theatres. This performance hammers home the horrors of the Western Front, from a source many did not even know existed.

Four stars