Fighting Words

Evan Buliung as Stanhope and Jeff Lillico as Raleigh in Journey's End. Photo Andree Lanthier. Courtesy Shaw Festival.

The world would never forget. That was the promise that sent millions of men to the trenches during the First World War. Those who perished would be forever remembered by grateful generations. Yet by the end of the 1920s, those who had stayed home during the War to End All Wars were not sure what exactly to honour, and those who had fought were at odds over what memories to preserve. British writers from Robert Graves to Siegfried Sassoon to Edmund Blunden tried to sort this out in prose, each with differing measures of success.

Where the theatre is concerned, however, one play stands out above all others: R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End. When it opened in London in December of 1928 — starring an unknown 21-year-old actor named Laurence Olivier in the lead role of Captain Stanhope — the audience was so moved by the production that it sat in stunned silence. The cast thought the mute reception signaled a failure, until one patron finally yelled “Bravo!” and the crowd burst into exuberant applause. The following day, the newspapers declared Journey’s End one of the greatest war plays of all time.

On May 27, Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Shaw Festival opens its own production of Journey’s End at the Court House Theatre. Directed by Christopher Newton, it’s the first Canadian production in many years, but one in a series of revivals that includes a 2004 hit production in London’s West End.

Though it may seem, on the surface, a bit of a museum piece, Journey’s End is a play that has significant resonance for modern audiences living through the war on terror and reading about the conflict in Iraq. As many historians have observed, the First World War is the lens through which the Western world views all ensuing conflicts. If so, Journey’s End is the theatrical vehicle through which to understand the nature of modern warfare, a type of mechanized conflict that began in 1914 and continues today in the streets of Fallujah. The play tackles the central question emerging out of the 20th century: how does one remain human in an inhumane world?

“Journey’s End is a play about people trying to remain decent in horrendous, disgusting, barbaric conditions,” says Newton. “It may be that we’ve gone back to thinking that being decent and being concerned for people is important. Selfishness isn’t as popular as it used to be.”

There are many unsettling parallels between our own age and the Edwardian period that preceded the First World War. Like the Edwardians, we idolize technology and place our faith in science. The First World War, of course, challenged the notion of “technological progress.” The airplanes that people believed would deliver the mail dropped bombs instead; chemistry that was to cure disease produced mustard gas. Even the innocuous telephone became an agent for death: thanks to target co-ordinates called in over the telephone, armies could orchestrate precise, rolling barrages that ultimately blew legions of men into oblivion. It is not hard to find present-day corollaries. Today, military surgeons use lasers to mend soldiers wounded by laser-guided missiles.

So, on one level, Journey’s End is a moving testament to the suffering that ushered in the 20th century. On another, it can be seen as a chilling precursor to what our new millennium may have in store.

Jeff Lillico as Raleigh, Evan Buliung as Stanhope, William Vickers as Trotter and Patrick Galligan as Osborne in Journey's End.

Journey’s End tells the story of Captain Dennis Stanhope, a young but weary officer who has served three years in the trenches and can only calm his nerves by drinking whisky. Stationed along the Western Front by the ruined village of St-Quentin in March of 1918, he is supported by his second in command, Lieutenant Osborne, a former schoolmaster, and second lieutenant Trotter, a working-class Cockney. The play’s action is triggered when neophyte second lieutenant Raleigh (Stanhope’s boyhood friend) turns up as his new officer. Young Raleigh is also the brother of Stanhope’s girlfriend. He worries that Raleigh will write home telling her of his condition. “She thinks I’m a wonderful chap,” Stanhope admits to Osborne. “She doesn’t know that if I went up those steps into the front line — without being doped on whiskey — I’d go mad with fright.”

Written by R.C. Sherriff, who during the war served as an officer with the 9th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment, Journey’s End is not an anti-war play, though it is frequently mistaken for one. Rather, it was envisioned by the amateur playwright as a tribute to fallen comrades, “simple unquestioning men who fought the war because it seemed the only right and proper thing to do.” It’s as close to living in the trenches as a modern audience will get. When George Bernard Shaw read it, he maintained that it was “a document not a drama.”

Journey’s End questions war simply by portraying it. The cast of the new Shaw production — which features Evan Buliung as Stanhope and Patrick Galligan as Osborne — takes full advantage of this candour. During a preview performance, Sherriff’s cracking dialogue comes off with aplomb. While the slang is somewhat dated (it features a lot of “Cheerio”s), the subtext is timeless. Stanhope and his men use language to hide their fear. They fight for each other as much as for a cause; the only thing that keeps them in the trenches is the fear of letting their comrades down. The result is riveting.

“It’s been an excellent voyage of discovery,” says Newton. “Once you let good actors bore into the play, it finds its centre. It’s a masterpiece of catharsis.”

This catharsis stems from the play’s powerful use of dramatic irony. The action is juxtaposed against the looming threat of an enormous German attack. On March 21, 1918, the Germans launched operation “Michel” and sent 500,000 men against 160,000 British troops. The attack was opened with a 6,000-gun barrage, reinforcements were called in, and by the end of six weeks fighting, 350,000 Allied troops were dead. Judged against this piece of history, virtually every character in Journey’s End is heading to his death. The audience of 1928 would be entirely aware of these facts. Hence the play’s title, a reference to Othello’s famous speech (Act V, ii) in which he foresees his own demise. “Here is my journey’s end; here is my butt [goal]. And very sea-mark of my utmost sails.”

In the trenches: Patrick Galligan as Osborne, Anthony Bekenn as The Colonel and Jeff Lillico as Raleigh. Photo Andree Lanthier. Courtesy Shaw Festival.

It is this irreversibility that gives the play its power and it is this sense of irreversibility that is appealing to modern audiences. The men in Journey’s End stick it out despite all the horrors that surround them. They strive to preserve the everyday, desperately clinging to the civilian world that has become so distant and unreal. The play is rife with talk of rugby, gardens, reading, theatre-going — all the trademarks of the pastoral English ideal. There is only one course available: to acquiesce to one’s fate.

One reason that Journey’s End has been considered an anti-war play is that it presents war as a perpetual endeavour, a very modern conceit. Stanhope and his company arrive in the trenches ready to serve their six days, after which they will be rotated to the rear, a standard practice during the war, just as GIs in Iraq are rotated in and out of combat. This image of soldier as factory worker, one who is marched in for his shift and, if he survives, marched out again, is a picture of war as industry. Just as certain as the fact that Stanhope and his men will die is the certainty that, despite their deaths, the war will go on.

In a sense, it did. By 1939, the world was at war again, and has been, in one way or another, ever since.

During the First World War, men lived like worms burrowed into the earth, surrounded by rotting corpses and filth. They writhed and cowered while rats roamed freely about. Sherriff uses this metaphor to full effect. Modern man does not know whether he is striding bravely forward or slipping into a barbarism never seen before. At one point, Stanhope asks Osborne, “I wonder how a worm knows whether it’s going up or down?”

“When it’s going down I suppose the blood runs into its head and makes it throb,” Osborne answers.

“Worms,” Stanhope notes, “haven’t got any blood.”

“Then I don’t suppose it ever does.”

“Rotten if it didn’t,” Stanhope says. “And went on going down when it thought it was coming up.”

“Yes,” says Osborne. “I expect that’s the one thing worms dread.”

Andrew Clark is a Toronto writer.