HUNDREDS of people packed the market place of a North-East town for a poignant live theatre performance in memory of the region's First World War fallen.

Homecoming was staged in Darlington on Friday as part of the Tees Valley Commemorates season of events to mark the centenary since the outbreak of the Great War.

The free show – which crackled with pyrotechnics, music and sound effects of the battlefield, not to mention emotion – is being performed elsewhere in the Tees Valley including Hartlepool, Stockton and Middlesbrough.

Its content will have had to be amended for each location in which it has been performed, as the Darlington edition contained references to the specifics areas of the town in which men lived and worked before being called up to fight.

The show, created by theatre company Periplum, began with the reciting of an alphabetical list of the area's First World War heroes, with lantern-carrying performers emerging from the shadows to symbolise the men.

There was time to reflect on the months that led up to the outbreak of war, when the people of Darlington faced poverty and industrial unrest, coupled with the looming hostilities.

After the declaration of war was recreated, the show examined the call to arms made to the men of Darlington – and countless towns, cities and villages – as well as the vital role played by the women those men left behind.

The show, which was visually and aurally stunning, was punctuated with the reading of sections of that list of fallen men.

One of the most emotional parts of the show came when the company recreated the countless moments when families were informed that their loved ones had been injured or killed in battle.

The sacrifice made by those who laid down their lives in the First World War was commemorated with a spectacular explosion of poppy-red tickertape.

Veterans from the Royal British Legion closed the show with a formal act of remembrance before the assembled crowd broke out into spontaneous applause.