Britain's What's On Event Guide

Everwitch Theatre 'Bomb Happy' VE Day 80 Double Bill

In the lead up to Remembrance Sunday, which this year focuses on the 80th anniversary of VE Day, this double bill of film, song and live performance using real life accounts has been specially created by award-winning writer and performer Helena Fox and actor-vocalist Natasha Jones, of Everwitch Theatre. It commemorates the 80th anniversaries of D-Day (2024) and VE Day (2025).

From D-Day to VE Day, this powerful one hour double bill of live performance (30 minutes) and short film (30 minutes) brings to life the verbatim accounts of two working class Yorkshire Normandy veterans, highlighting the lifelong impact of post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep trauma, not only on veterans of war but on their families.

“We’re in the water, wading to the shore, and we’re literally brushing against what looks like logs, and they’re just bodies rolling in the surf, people that we know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-year-olds, they’re pople that we know!”
Smudger from Bomb Happy: Smudger’s Story

“I had to try to very carefully wake him up, but very carefully you know. You see, he’d be shaking. And for a moment when he woke, he’d still be back there – in the war.”
Gloria, Smudger’s wife from Bomb Happy: Smudger’s Story

“Bomb Happy is a slang phrase we use for being under fire for many days at a time. It does describe the condition you become.”
Smudger from Bomb Happy, Smudger’s Story