Osbert

Osbert is a boy on the edge of a war he doesn't yet understand: the second son of a Northumbrian lord, living in the shadow of an elder brother who will inherit everything. He's curious, quick-tempered, and eager to prove himself, watching the adults around him brace for Viking ships on the horizon.

Jacob Dudman gives the show its emotional starting point — a child's-eye view of a world about to be torn apart, played with genuine boyish restlessness rather than precocious gravity. It's a brief, unshowy performance, but it makes everything that follows land harder, because we've seen who this person was before history got its hands on him.