“JOURNEY’S END”

Taranaki Daily News, 19 December 1929, Page 13

“JOURNEY’S END”

REMARKABLE WAR PLAY. STORY OF TRAGEDY AND HUMOUR. In a crazy dug-out, with a few bunks, a table holding candles stuck in jam tins, a handful of men in stained uniforms and a tale that knocked at the heart, “Journey’s End,” the great English play given at the New Plymouth Opera House last night, shone a merciless searchlight on war. Stripped to the bare essentials of drama, “Journey’s End” showed men walking next door to death. One moment they joked and talked of races, with trained earwigs; the next moment the thin wire of sanity snapped and they cried aloud. The war of the flagwavers and the talking men, the cheap vaudeville show of war, was lit up as a thing of horror which took fine men to death, trampled youth in the mud, and bit like a file into the nerves, driving men mad. But out in this playground of torture grew a sensitive plant -—the comradeship and selflessness of the men.

The play works itself out slowly, just as the war worked itself out, but in this slow procession of events there is a quality of destiny. There is a fatal order in the procession. Things must happen as they do. In one white-hot flash of tragedy is revealed the whole pitiful chain of the causes. Stanhope, the brilliant young company commander, is getting steadily drunk. The whisky is drqwning the black shapes in his mind to quiescence. But the boy Raleigh has joined his company, and he knew Raleigh at home. Raleigh worshipped him at school, and Stanhope loved Raleigh’s sister. A fear springs up that Raleigh will write home and tell them that he is a drunkard. It is nerves, nerves, and he pours out more whiskey. Raleigh comes out with his letter and Stanhope orders him to give it to him to be censored. Raleigh protests and Stanhope snatches it from his hand. “Stanhope is splendid,” says the letter.

Hibbert, who might have been a tame little professional man at home, complains of neuralgia. He cannot sleep, he says, and must be sent to the base to see a doctor. Stanhope forbids him to go; no officer can be spared. Hibbert will go. He runs towards the door of the dug-out but Stanhope stands there, with a drawn revolver. Hibbbrt loses his manhood, sobs and prays, -and strikes his superior officer. It is all nerves, nerves. Stanhope gives him 30 seconds to change his mind. Hibbert stands with his arms wide and eyes closed white, against the wall, waiting for Stanhope’s bullet. “You stood that well,” says Stanhope. “I’m afraid too. That’s why I drink the whiskey. Come up with me and we'll stand guard together.” The brigadier wants to capture a German prisoner to find out the regiments on the opposite side, so a raiding party must be sent. Osborne, Stanhope’s right hand, will lead the men with Raleigh. Osborne, the home-loving, garden-loving man, ie the finest char-, actor in the company. He has kept his nerves and war has not been able to break him in that way. So he must be brought low in another. Raleigh returns without Osborne, who is lying dead in No Man’s Land. “The brigadier will be pleased,” says the colonel, “when he learns that the prisoner has been taken.” Stanhope, "who is bitterly feeling the loss of the man he loved, replies: “It’s awfully nice to think the brigadier will be pleased.” And to Raleigh, who has come in unstrung and overwrought, here merely says, “Must you sit on Osborne’s bed?” Then there is the final scene, symbolic. The Germans are planning an attat-k and the line must be held. The shells fall thick and the air is torn with explosives. The officers are up with the men, except for Stanhope; who is working the final plans for the defence. The sergeant-major comes down the steps of the dug-out with the body of Raleigh over hw shoulder. His spine is shot in two, and while the fight goes on Stanhope deftly eases the pain until the boy closes his eyes. A message is sent to him for his help. He must go up to his men. And when Stanhope is out of sight the dug-out walls fall in and the light fades slowly round the boy lying on the rough couch, the symbol of England’s youth. Besides the tragedy of war the play gives all the comedy. There is the enor'mous Trotter, a Gargantua of a man, who lives his food. When the soup is brought in unflavoured he sums things up in a phrase. “War with pepper is bad enough, but war without pepper is awful.” There is an exquisite touch even in the injured way he buttons up his coat after one of Stanhope’s bursts of temper. Mason, the cook, was .first class, and when his table delicacies were spurned there was a perfect quiver in his “Very good, sir.” Whether it was Hardy “big game hunting” in his socks or the sergeant-major pouring himself a “small” tot of whiskey, the humour was excellently done. For the others, the chief actors, no higher praise could be given than to say they were worthy of the play. Stanhope, so old in his youth, with twitching lips and tragic eyes,, was brilliantly

played by Reginald Tate. Harvey Adams made the part of Osborne so real and lovable that his death was a personal loss. Always he will be remembered in his favourite attitude, feet on the table legs, shoulders hunched, with his hand round the bowl of his pipe, quietly working things out. As Raleigh, the fair, eager boy, Lewis Shaw played to a nicety the hesitancies and enthusiasms of youth, and Reginald Dane, the. Colonel, cleverly let his real affection for the'men be glimpsed behind a mask of boredom. Taken all in all, from its subject, from its plot and from its acting, there has been no play in New Plymouth- which has been so deeply felt as the play of Journey’s End. And with the end of the journey reached the whole question r :ked by the play is clears--“ Where, with it all, did we get to?”