How do you tell a story that is too big, too complex, too horrific and too long? Even if you could find a way to tell it, how would you get anyone to listen? This is the conundrum that has faced Nuclear Test Veterans since the formation of the BNTVA.

There is something of Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in A Thousand Sons, a one person play written and performed by Jamie Sefton. However, where Coleridge’s’ sailor, bound to tell and retell his story, fixes the listener with a ‘glittering eye’ and forces the tale upon him, Sefton’s Bertie, a Christmas Island veteran, charms and beguiles, humbly letting his story weave itself out through a 45-minute monologue.

The story will be familiar to all veterans and their families drawn as it is from testimonies of BNTVA members; the initial excitement of the trip to the other side of the world, the signing of the Official Secrets Act, the fun and games and the gradual realisation that something darker is on the horizon. The moment of detonation is described in understated detail because Sefton realises that this is the really beginning of a story; not a crescendo just a prelude to a slow pedestrian decay.

And so, Bertie returns home to start a family and face the realisation that the blasts he witnessed are taking a toll on his health and, oh so tragically, that of his children. In the tradition of travelling storytellers, Sefton’s stagecraft is simple and subtle.

Bertie uses a white marker pen to write notable years on the floor to help us through the story. Over the course of the play however these years become more obscure as they are written with more desperation and the need to tell the story obscures the story being told. The pen also marks out the skeleton of Bertie’s hand as he carries with him that X –ray memory shared by so many veterans. It is also a pen pointed at him by a strange figure on his doorstep reminding him of his signature on the Official Secrets Act all those years ago that convinces Bertie that darker forces are at play and that the loyalty and service aren’t necessarily rewarded. The salutes that begin in respectful earnest to superior officers turn into involuntary spasms which punctuate the play giving moments in which official narratives contradict the lived experience of the veterans. Despite the content this is actually a joyful 45 minutes in the presence of a brilliant performer and his semi fictional creation.

Coleridge’s guest came away from the Ancient Mariner ‘sadder and wiser’, Sefton’s audience left in much the same way.