Matthew Midgley talks about his new play Quicksand and life as a soldier in Iraq conflict

It is a reminder of his years as a soldier, a time that saw him serve in Iraq and sleep on the marbled floor of Saddam Hussein’s palace, before the itch to write could not be resisted any longer.

A greater itch has persisted, however, leading to his writing his warts-and-all play Quicksand for York Theatre Royal’s TakeOver Festival at on the tenth anniversary of the second Gulf War.

“In my view, probably any military death was illegal because the Iraq conflict wasn’t supported,” said Matthew.

“It had no basis in the code of war, which we supposedly follow, and if you carry that to its conclusion, all the British soldiers were illegal combatants and therefore the deaths they inflicted were murder – and that is not the fault of the soldiers, but the duty of care of those who employ them.”

His play, the first for the new York company Tempting Fate, feeds off his memories in its darkly humorous story of four soldiers “stuck in the middle” in January 2003, when Lance Corporal Si Jennings and his unit are in the Kuwaiti desert, waiting to invade Iraq, and he “can’t quite believe it is happening”.

Jennings begins to question exactly what democracy is and what it is that he is supposed to be fighting for: questions that Matthew Midgley asks again in his play.

Bradford-born Matthew, who is studying for a PhD in playwriting, had joined the Royal Signals in 1999 at the age of 16. “I was always good academically but A-levels and university didn’t interest me at the time. I wanted to go out and do things,” he said.

He “did things” for seven years, his last posting being at Imphal Barracks. “But I’d always been interested in writing and that was niggling away at me, so I made the short switch – 500 yards – from Imphal to the university to study a degree in English Literature,” said Matthew, now 30.

His writing has progressed from “bad poems to really starting to take it seriously” from 2009 when he began a Masters degree at university’s theatre, film and television department.

In Quicksand, he is taking it even more seriously, drawing together his thoughts from his archive of “blueies” (airmail envelopes) that he received and sent and Internet correspondence for a play that combines an account of troops in the desert in the run-up to the war with verbatim reportage of what was being said back home.

His aim is to “debunk the whole thing” by showing up the inconsistencies of statements in Parliament and the reality on the ground.

“After 9/11 happened, rumours of the war were around in mid-summer 2002 and there was definitely a new intensity to the training that, if you thought about it more, you would have realised that something was happening…but you really don’t ask that many questions as a soldier,” he said.

And so, Matthew was posted to the northern Kuwaiti desert and subsequently Iraq for six months, working in communications.

“It’s a case of yeah, we’re going and there’s even excitement; a lot of people, including myself, wanted an adventure and no-one knew at the time how it would turn out,” he said.

It turned out that “essentially we were ill-equipped to go out there”, said Matthew, who cited “inappropriately equipped vehicles, not enough standard uniforms to go round, things being slow to arrive; body armour that wouldn’t protect you from anything”.

“You complain but then you get on with it, which the British Army has always done, with gallows humour. That’s the mentality you need, because it’s not a democratic institution; there’s no redress there,” he said.

Since Matthew left the Army in 2006, he has noted the reaction to the bank bail-outs and austerity measures mirroring the public opposition to President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair going to war in 2003.

“For me, there’s a link between what happened in 2003, through the bank bail-outs and the cuts and the redundancies that are happening now,” said Matthew.

“There isn’t a popular will for the course of action being taken now, just as everyone knew that the Iraq war was a terrible idea, and in these circumstances, governments seek not to do the wise thing but to spin it to get the thing done anyway,” he said.

Ultimately, Matthew’s 80-minute play is “about democracy”. “A military story is the best setting to bring out the points, thinking about what democracy means now, given the events of the past decade,” he said.

“Are we truly represented now; who is in charge? I ask this because there’s a sense of failure after a decade of unpopular conflict and economic catastrophe, and I’ve sensed a growing appetite for change,” he said.

“The real issue is wholesale change in the political system, which you could start by changing the relationship between business and government and changing the voting system.”

First, however, Matthew is focusing on Quicksand, whose 8pm performances from tomorrow until Saturday will be staged in the basement of Bar Lane Studios, in Bar Lane.

“This place is like a cross between a Blitz shelter and a squat, so it’s kind of appropriate,” said Matthew.

Tickets can be booked on 01904 623568 or online at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk