Disquiet on the Western Front

First appeared: Evening Star, Ipswich, April 22, 2008

Journey's End by RC Sherriff
Colchester Mercury Theatre until May 3

SOMEWHERE in north-eastern France, early in 1918. The trench war is so static that officers' dug-outs are wood-panelled rooms with bunks, tables and chairs, maps and orders pinned to the wall.

It is in one such dug-out, stunningly recreated on the Mercury stage by designer Sara Perks, that the whole action of Journey's End takes place.

Over three days this confined space is home to five English officers and their servant cook.

One is newly arrived, fresh from school, where the company commander – just three years his senior – had been captain of rugger and cricket, the hero he worshipped.

Another, known to the rest as “uncle”, is a former schoolteacher old enough to be the younger officers' father.

To begin with it is all quiet on the western front. There is boredom. There is tension. There is time to meet these assorted characters, witness their stresses and inter-relationships before the expected German assault begins.

There is time, inevitably, to prepare for tragedy.

In essence, the story of the First World War trenches is well known and this is a fairly straightforward documentary play. Now, 80 years after it was first produced – with a young unknown called Laurence Olivier in the central role – it might seem uncomfortably close at times to cliché.

But the characters are so well drawn, and so well acted by a cracking Mercury company cast, that it all seems fresh and newly illuminating.

The play's very naivety, its lack of dramatic surprises, is all one with its essential honesty.

Sherriff had himself been a young officer in the trenches. The play grew out of his letters home, all the characters undoubtedly based on people he served with.

Incredibly, he later described it as “a war play in which not a word was spoken against the war, no word of condemnation uttered by any of its characters”.

Yet at its heart, it is not the hell of war so much as its sheer futility – its essential silliness – that is brought powerfully home.

There is no weak link in this fine production, but three of the performances are particularly outstanding.

Gus Gallagher is credibly heroic, admirable and battle-weary as the hard-drinking Stanhope. One cannot imagine Olivier was as good in the role.

David Oakes, as the tragically youthful Raleigh , has every ounce of gaucheness, sensitivity, decency and fresh-from-school bravery that were no doubt common features among the young men sent to die for their country.

Best of all, Roger Delves-Broughton has never been better than as the time-worn, pipe-smoking Osborne. The upper lip is not so much stiff as resigned, his duty all to the men around him, his vision of what's going on clearer than anyone else's.