"JOURNEY'S END"

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 118, 14 November 1929, Page 5

"JOURNEY'S END"

A-GRIM AND TRAGICAL PLAY

I see them In foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats And mocked by hopeless longing to regain Bank holidays, and picture shows, and sports, And going Jp the office in the train.

This description of the life the play "Journey's End" depicted is by Siegfried Sassooii, poet and soldier. As the play ivas staged for the first time at the- Opera House last.night, so the actors were discovered in such dug-outs, and all dreaming and talking of the commonplaces in their civilian lives day by day. Nothing that was said or dono^exceeded the limits of probability, only the expletives in general use' in the dug-out were moderated. For the rest the play was stark realism from beginning to end. The play is plotless, and its cast consists "of.twelve characters, all male, all soldiers: not oven a nurse or a "Waac." When women are mentioned at all it is almost always with affection, tenderness, or respect, for the time of the play is 1918. Contrary to the traditions and conventions of the theatre, the interest aroused in the large audience last night was strained at breaking point through the throe acts. When the curtain rises discovering the dug-out, it is occupied by one character,- Captain Hardy, who is handling the company for six days. Enters Lieutenant Osbovne, a middleaged man, married and with a family, a schoolmaster in civil life. ..He is as punctilious in details as to orders as Hardy is casual in passing them on. As the latter is leaving the dug-out he comforts the second in command with the information that "the big German attack is expected any day now. I should think you'll get it— right in the neck." "Osbonie replies fhat he "mustn't miss it," and that he will make a note of it in his diary. His immediately superior officer is Captain Stanhope, a very much younger man, almost young enough to be Osborne's sou, but brave, humane .(as far as he dare be), and capable. Yet after three years' strain his nerves have given outj and heavy spirit drinking is the^ only thing that keeps him going. By "wangling," young Lieutenant Raleigh, who was a junior by three years at school with Stanhope*' manages to get drafted to Stanhope's .company During'an all too short leave in England Stanhope fell in love with Raleigh's sister, and he is afraid of news reaching her through her brother of his actual condition, the result of neurasthenia and alcoholism.. There is a tense scene when the boy does write to his sister, and Stanhope, in the presence of the writer, insists on censoring the letter. Osborne, who is known to his brother officers as "Uncle," is the soul of tact, and overcomes the difficulty by reading the letter himself. It represented Stanhope as a hero in battle as he was to Raleigh in trfo playing fields at school.

Then tlie Colonel a few hours before the expected big attack conveys orders to Stanhope to make a raid on the enemy's trenches, some seventy yards distant, in order to bring in a German prisoner or two for interrogations. Osborne and Raleigh are selected to carry it out. They do, and Osborne is killed and Ealeigh is mortally wounded, but one prisoner is brought in and the information required is obtained from him. Then a shell falls on the dug-out and it collapses in smoke, dust, and darkness, and so the curtain falls. The diversities of characters anc the development of the incidents of the play were exceedingly impressive, and/ held the audience spellbound. As the personnel was highly assorted "in the later days of the war, when the flower of the professional or "contemptible" army had been slain, so it was hi the. play "Journey's End." The square civilian pegs was forced into the uncompromisingly round military hole as wood plugged into a block "tf steel. Here one saw Second Lieutenant Trotter, a-Cockney, unabashed and seemingly born without nerves, or any imagination, except such as related to gastronomy; the quiet, grave, kindly, and withal quite human "Uncle' 5 Osborne; the enthusiastic boy Ealeigh, ' frothing" to get into action; the pardonable malingerer Second Lieutenant Hibbert, who had to be driven to 'rfy to take his place in danger with the rest, even at the point of the revolverthe mess cook, Mason, with the task'of concocting appetising meals out of unappetising materials; the London ser-geant-major, and the typical "brass hat (if there ever was a type) were all true to. life. Stanhopes were not at all uncommon, as soldiers who were at the front can testify. It would amount to impertinence to | criticise the acting of individuals in an exceptionally capable east, but the names of those who filled the parts it seems, should be placed on record They were s follow: Captain Hardy, Ambrose Flower; Lieutenant Osborne, Harvey Adams; Private Mason, John Fernside; Second Lieutenant Ealeigh, Lewis Shaw; Captain Stanhope, Reginald late; Second Lieutenant Trotter Vincent Lawaon; Second Lieutenant Hibbert Alan Lawrance; the Company Ser-geant-Major, Reginald Wykeham; the Colonel Reginald Dane; a German Soldier, Bodge Carey; Lance-Corporal & I' S e°TgS Jenniags; a Private Soldier Arthur Stigant, jun. At the close the whole company was called be&Sf curtain and vi«oronßlrap"Journey's End" is not so much a Play as an indictment of the wickedness of war. For all its flashes of bright comedy, it is a grim tragedy and should not be without its effects up"" he minds of those whose meinorieTof of the rising generation. The play evenings^ 16* *"" *■*•&£