Cruelly Realistic

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 584, 9 February 1929, Page 24

Cruelly Realistic

“Journey’s End” is a Powerful War Play “Journey’s End,” produced at the Apollo Theatre, London, by the Incorporated Stage Society, is in some ways the most cruelly realistic of the many war plays, says a London critic. The author, R. C. Sherriff, has no direct story to tell; no heroics to appeal to cheap emotions. Nor are there scenes of gore. Instead he presents a study of tempe-ament and an analysis of fear. The scene is laid in a dug-out in the British trenches before St. Quentin in the March of 1918. There officers and men are seen living their unnatural lives in miserable conditions, with death always on the threshold, hut with most of them fighting down their fears by the power of will, hiding their true feelings under a veneer of flippancy. One, a captain only three years from school, an ideal officer, keeps his nerve from breaking by doping himself with whisky. Another is only prevented from desertion by the threat of his captain’s revolver. Another, a middle-aged schoolmaster, calms himself before he goes out to almost certain death, by quoting “Alice in Wonderland.” And a cockney batman and a cockney second “loot” keep themselves braced for their “job” by a free use of their cockney humour. The end, of course, is tragedy for most of them. Every detail of the play rings true of infantry life as lived throughout the war. Atmosphere and technical detail are perfectly reproduced. And the actors, having real men and real temperaments to portray, are also perfect.David Horne, George Zucco, Maurice Evans, Laurence Oliver, Melville Cooper, Alexander Field. Robert Speaiglit and H. G. Stoker put all thenheart and soul into the leading parts. It has been said that there is no popular appeal in war plays. People are sick of the subject, we are told. There may not be any money in “Journey’s End.” But the audience was obviously deeply moved. Few plays —war or otherwise —have had a bigger appeal or carried a bigger lesson.