Out of the trenches, a deeply moving play

Paul Kolnik
Hugh Dancy (left) and Jefferson Mays in Journey’s End

By Scott Harrah

On the surface, R.C. Sherriff’s 1929 British drama about World War I seems an odd choice for a revival. Few of us were alive when that war broke out in the early 20th century, but 78 years after the show’s initial London production — which originally starred Laurence Olivier — “Journey’s End” is hardly dated. One would simply need to substitute the story’s World War I trenches for the battlegrounds of Iraq and “Journey’s End” would be a topical and current reminder of the futility of war in any era.

There hasn’t been a show this cerebrally powerful in some time. It is not often that one leaves the theater so intellectually stimulated but emotionally drained, with the senses shocked and numbed and so deeply affected by tragic characters that seem like people who could be our own brothers, sons, uncles and fathers. “Journey’s End” may not be light stuff, but it’s an illuminating and thought-provoking piece of art that just might be the spring season’s best drama. Playwright R.C. Sherriff, the venerable British writer best known for his classic film “Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” had trouble getting “Journey’s End” produced in the late 1920s because 770,000 British lives had been claimed a decade earlier in the war and producers thought it might be too soon for a show with such sensitive subject matter. Yet it managed to become a worldwide sensation anyway and still seems innovative today, because unlike so many war movies and stage plays, the story doesn’t focus on bloody battlefield scenes. Instead, we see nothing but a dark dugout near British-controlled trenches in St. Quentin, France, with some scenes even done by candlelight. Jason Taylor does a superb job of lighting the play to make us feel that we are really there in the trenches with the guys, trying to make time pass in the silence on the Western Front as the Germans plot another attack. A lesser story might make some unwilling to sit and listen to characters speak in the semi-dark, but the narrative and the actors’ performances are so real, so luminous and the situation is so heartbreaking that everything is nothing less than engrossing from the very first scene.

Hugh Dancy — who recently starred as Essex opposite Oscar-winner Helen Mirren in HBO’s extraordinary miniseries “Elizabeth” — brilliantly plays Captain Stanhope, a 21-year-old who is heading a British frontline battalion about to lead his men into a deadly offensive on the Germans. For such a young guy, he is already a hardened veteran with a drinking problem. His second man in command is the sweet-natured, father-like, middle-aged former schoolteacher Lieutenant Osborne (the marvelous Boyd Gaines) and 18-year-old 2nd Lieutenant Raleigh (Stark Sand), a boyhood friend of Stanhope’s. Raleigh is happy to be working with his old buddy, but the officer has changed considerably for the worse since their carefree days back home.

Included on the team are two other 2nd Lieutenants: Hibbert (Justin Blanchard), a neurotic, timid man faking neuralgia in hopes of getting sent back to England, and the obese, big-hearted and shamelessly fearless Trotter (John Ahern). Jefferson Mays, who recently thrilled theatergoers in the Tony-winning “I Am My Own Wife,” is spectacular as enlisted man Private Mason, a cook with a wicked sense of humor about the sorry state of the war rations in the kitchen. All the men come from different social backgrounds, from the blue collar to the privileged British upper class, but everyone is equal when it comes to the inevitable fate they face. It is this sense of a social microcosm that helps give the story its depth, indicating that in war, there is no distinction between the classes because everyone is simply human, vulnerable, and far from immortal as the ear-splitting sounds of bombs explode above them.

The three-act play tells the story of three dangerous days in 1918, but the remarkable thing is that Sheriff doesn’t use his characters or the dialogue to preach about or disparage war. Here is a tale of men trying to maintain a sense of normalcy as death erupts all around them, and David Grindley directs the outstanding cast at a dizzying but natural pace that simply never lets up and is consistently riveting. One does not want to give too much of the story away, but it is interesting to note the play’s final, soul-shattering scene, in which characters stand in front of a British war memorial and we see the names of the men amongst names of thousands of others. It has the same solemn impact as when one sees the names of victims of the World Trade Center on plaques, scans family names on a Holocaust memorial, or reads the death tolls from Iraq in the New York Times each day. It is truly challenging for even the most jaded theatergoer to hold back the tears as we leave the theater and realize that, in times of war, even nearly a century later, little has changed regarding the helplessness and sorrow we feel when it comes to the loss of lives.