NOT having read Pat Barker’s trilogy of First World War-set books in which poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owens go to war, I’m in no position to make comparisons between stage and page versions. But Nicholas Wright’s adaptation is admirable in bringing home the horrors, the mental torture and the sheer unforgiving nature of war through wounded – some physically, all psychologically – soldiers in Craiglockhart, a Scottish hospital treating mental illness.

We see the truly shocking electric shock treatment delivered elsewhere, but Regeneration offers an alternative view through the eyes of psychiatrist/psychologist Captain Rivers whose approach is more modern, more Freudian.

He’s provided with some very eloquent patients, notably Siegfried Sassoon whose defiant public statement Finished With The War could have seen him shot but who, through friend and fellow officer Robert Graves pulling a few strings, is declared shell-shocked rather than traitorous. His fellow patients include budding poet Wilfred Owen and a temporarily mute Yorkshireman Billy Prior.

What follows is a fascinating, challenging and emotional discussion of war and its consequences that never loses its grip, aided by uniformly excellent performances led by Stephen Boxer’s well-drawn doctor whose sessions with his patients make him question his views on war and medicine. Fine showings too from Tim Delap as Sassoon, Garmon Rhys as Owen and Jack Monaghan’s Billy Prior, who could have become a stereotypical Yorkshire, but develops as someone with heart and soul.

Simon Godwin’s fast-flowing production delivers short sharp bursts of battlefield action, including one gasp-inducing shock moment, to illustrate the soldiers’ minds, while Alex Beale’s designs allow smooth scene transitions with minimum fuss in a play where words are everything.

  • Runs until Saturday. Box Office: 01904-623568 and yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
  • Darlington Civic Theatre, Nov 11-15. 01325-486555 and darlingtoncivic.co.uk