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Written by
R.C. Sherriff
Director
David Grindley
Designer
Jonathan Fensom
Lighting designer
Jason Taylor
Sound designer
Gregory Clarke
Casting
Sam Jones
Cast in order of appearance:
Captain Hardy
Guy Williams
Lieutenant Osborne
David Haig
Private Mason
Phil Cornwall
2nd Lieutenant Raleigh
Christian Coulson
Captain Stanhope
Geoffrey Streatfield
2nd Lieutenant Trotter
Paul Bradley
Private Albert Brown
Alex Grimwood
2nd Lieutenant Hibbert
Ben Meyjes
Sergeant Major
Guy Williams
Colonel
Rupert Wickham
German Soldier
Max Berendt
Lance Corporal Broughton
John R Mahoney
A Private
Alex Grimwood
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Comedy Theatre
13
January - 6 March 2004 |
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Seventy-five
years on from the first performance
of R.C. Sherriff's play, David Grindley's
new production is large-spirited and
a joy to watch. The curtain rises on
a simple dugout lit by candles throwing
bright warmth across the floor and walls.
On a wooden table are several cups of
tea and a half-finished bottle of whisky;
there are a few upturned boxes for seats;
the air is close and, we are told, smells
strongly of bacon. In the austere but
homely intimacy of this setting, only
occasionally disturbed by muffled explosions
and gunfire from without, Captain Stanhope
and his four officers - along with Phil
Cornwall's endearingly earnest and overly
deferential Mason - wait and attempt
to prepare for an imminent attack. They
are somewhere near St Quintin, only
70 yards from the front line, during
the time of the last great German offensive
of the First World War.
If (as
in Othello's famous speech) the phrase
'Journey's End' suggests an especially
tangible way of looking at death, this
title might seem to set the scene for
a more general preoccupation with how
to maintain a sense of reality in the
face of war. The idea would be not so
much that confronted with war we need
euphemism, but that in this situation
we need literally to find any humanly
possible way of going forward. Accordingly,
sometimes violent or confused, sometimes
tender, sometimes with humour, the characters
through their interactions quietly endeavour
to reach such adequate ways of experiencing
the situation in which they find themselves.
Motivating
this theme there lies a romantic myth,
shared by some of the characters, that
man will always find ways to block out,
rebel against, or otherwise deny or
defy the 'unbearable'. So we see discussions
of how 'as men' to survive without deserting,
or committing suicide, or going mad.
Osborne advises Raleigh: 'Think of it
as romantic. It helps'. Or the bleaker
solution proposed by Stanhope: to drink
and to forget.
But Sherriff
appears to have an equivocal attitude
to these ideas, something which is well
brought out in this production. The
main performances without exception
combine complex characterisations with
the sort of natural mutual familiarity
that makes one feel glad and alive to
be drawn into their company. So in spite
of the apparent despair, the audience
is struck also by the fact that the
characters do after all go on living
(from moment to moment), while neither
the romantic nor the plain drunk perspectives
ever totally eclipse each other, nor
distort the play's uunswerving realism.
As in Alice in Wonderland (the book
Osborne chooses to consult in the last
moments of his life), the irrationality
of the characters' situation turns out
not to preclude some kind of acceptance.
On this
note, it is part of the humility and
well-researched sensitivity of the production
that while its characters constantly
manifest and elicit different strategies
for How? to deal with their situation,
they do not ever seriously formulate
to themselves the ultimate question
Why? Osborne, Raleigh, Trotter, and
Hibbert each achieve a distinctive balance
between acknowledgement and denial,
all taking on a life of their own that
goes beyond what one could strictly
find in the script. Perhaps most crucial
however, because the others' actions
are inevitably premised on his, is Geoffrey
Streatfield's Captain Stanhope. Tall
and thin, with striking looks 'rather
from attractive features than from good
health', with his instinctive practical
sense, his bravery, his passing magnanimities,
his nervous pallor and his irascibility,
a lesser production might be tempted
to lend to this character something
of the dissolute tragic hero. But Streatfield's
interpretation faithfully reflects the
mood of the entire play by emphasising
more than anything else an extreme fragility
and strain and inevitable awareness
('Whenever I look at anything nowadays
I see right through it'.)
Similarly,
while in the strangeness of their circumstances,
and the constant but largely unspoken
awareness of approaching death, the
men's familiar banter is increasingly
punctuated with questions (to the older
Osborne 'Do you think this life sharpens
the imagination?, and later in desperation
to the young Raleigh 'You think there's
no limit to what a man can bear?');
nevertheless, in the absence of ornamentation
in the form of music or props or sentimentality,
such remarkable observations avoid any
aspect of lofty political rhetoric or
philosophising, and take on instead
a wholly believable and urgent place
in the characters' practical concerns.
In this
way, while the terrible futility of
their shared situation may sometimes
confront the characters as almost impossible
to bear, it never strikes them or the
audience as deeply absurd or tragic.
This is an unexpected virtue.
Naomi Goulder
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