“JOURNEY’S END.”

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 17840, 12 October 1929, Page 17 (Supplement)

“JOURNEY’S END.”

MANY TIMES REFUSED. NOW SEASON’S BIGGEST HIT. The New Zealand tour of "Journey’s End” will open at Auckland on October 30. The story of the production of this play is one of tlie romances of the stage. Written by R. C. Sherriff, an "unknown” English dramatist, it was refused by many managers until Maurice Browne saw its possibilities and produced it. Immediately It became the hit of the London season, and Is still running—and Is likely to cun for three year 3, It is said. In New Y'ork, too, "Journey’s End” has become the outstanding success of the season, and several touring companies have been formed to take the play through the country. From Paris and Berlin comes tlie same story of success; in fact, it is doubtful if any other play has ever won sucli international recognition. The company which comes to New Zealand is headed by Reginald Tate, an English actor, as Captain Stanhope. Author Gets £2OOO Pen Week. A traveller from London reports that R. C. Sherriff, whose happy lot is to have written “Journey’s End,” Is in a fair way to realise £2OOO a week from that play for the greater part of the season. There are, or soon will be, three companies in England, including the one at the Prince of Wales, London, and an equal number In the United States. Not to mention (he French, German, Australian, Czechoslovak, Siamese and Polynesian productions in preparation or contemplated. It is said, moreover, that the highest salary in the London company for a time was about £ls per week, but that after the first ten weeks the management decided to give a 10 per cent, weekly bonus, which was figured from tlie beginning of the run. The London Era says;— “ Journey’s End ” goes marching on. The Libraries have just made a deal fop sixteen weeks, which amounts to £24,000. In the provinces, too, it is playing to packed houses. Incidentally the first actor to play Captain Stanhope (Laurence Olivier) is now in New Y'ork rehearsing in “Murder on the Second Floor.” THE LONDON CAPTAIN STANHOPE. STRAIN OF THE CHARACTER. Everyone who has seen Mr R. C. Sherriff’s fine war play, "journey's End” (says a London paper), will recognise how great a strain the part of Captain Stanhope must he upon the actor. All Uic lime there has to be indicated the nervous tension of the man who, for fear lest his courage may fail, is drinking heavily. It is Mr Colin Clive’s achievement that throughout the play he makes us see that this fear, though real, is baseless, and that Stanhope beats it down not by a false courage inspired hy alcohol, hut by sheer strength of character. Asked if lie did not find this constant suggestion of strain telling upon him,

Mp Clive admitted that the part was a strenuous one, but went on to speak enthusiastically of Its qualities and of the skill, with which Mr Sherrlff had created It. Mr Clive, indeed, deprecated too much stress being put upon the acting or a play which had provided its exponents with such great opportunities. The play, of course, is a fine piece of work, but we may still hold that the author is exceptionally happy in its presentation. Mr Clive, who is half French —his mother is a Frenchwoman —is keenly interested in the forthcoming Paris production of “Journey’s End” at the Guitry Theatre, and he and his wife, Miss Jeanne de Casalis, also a Frenchwoman, are flying over to see the first performance. Speaking of the enthusiasm with which the play lias been received, Mr Clive mentioned the fact that there is one London Individual who regularly goos to see it twice a week. Although Mr Clive is still young, he has been eleven years on the stage. When war ceased lie was at Sandhurst preparing for an Army career. In l'Jl'j lie declared for the stage. BERLIN ACCLAIMS THE PLAY. AN EMPHATIC HIT. "Journey's End,” the English war play, was produced in Berlin this evening (says the Berlin correspondent of the London Daily Mail). At the end of the first act the curtain went up and down seven or eight times. At the end of the play it went up and down a dozen times, and the audience was still applauding when the Iron curtain was lowered. “An emphatic hit,” a German said as he came out of the Deutsche Kunstlertheater. “It is a very long time since I saw a Berlin first night like this one.” It was a remarkable evening. A few years ago it would have been an impossible evening. Here was a play about the British fighting the Germans, the whole of the action passing in the trenches, and a German audience not only sat through it with obvious and tens© Interest but also expressed unmistakable approval of It. The audience was to an Englishman almost as interesting as the play. It was practically wholly German and surprisingly more than 50 per cent. | feminine. Hundreds of young women j and girls who could have been but children during Hie war were in the theatre. The author of the play, Mr R. C. Sherriff, was there. • "I am liking the performance very

much,” Mr Sherriff said. “They have had no help for the production, and the version is not 'finite the same as ours, but the treatment Is good." At the finish Mr Sherriff went on the stage and shook hands with members of the company and bowed repeatedly to the loudly applauding audience. In London “Journey's End" makes people cry. In Berlin “The Other Side” keeps them absorbed. It was supremely interesting to see an all-German company in the parts of British' soldiers. With one or two exceptions they played their parts admirably. Mathias Wieman as Captain Stanhope reminded me of Sir Gerald du Maurier aged about 30. He is excellent. I liked the Osborne, that quiet schoolmaster who gets killed in a raid; the Trotter, whose ex-ranker humour went very well; and the cowardly llibbert, whose emotional outbursts stopped the outbursts this evening. If to-night’s Berlin audience is a guide, it looks as if “Journey's End” will be as popular in Germany as it is proving in London and New York.