The Theatre
L.- TUNNEL TRENCH." BY HUBERT GRIFFITH. AT THE DUCHESS THEATRE. " DOUAUMONT." BY E. W. MOELLER. THE STAGE SOCIETY.]
Two more War plays And we must expect many more until the mood of curiosity or of retrospect wears itself out. Excellent, indeed, if the crowd goes to such plays, and reads one or all of the innumerable War books, in order to learn from them why there must be " no more war." A doubt or a question suggests itself, however.
Crowds seldom go anywhere to be taught anything. The habit of staying away from sermons is general. What (without cant) is the meaning of the actual popularity of the War theme ? How is it that so many people are eager again to live through that time " when but to think was to be full of sorrow " ? .
I leave this problem to the mass-psychologist, and hasten to point out that Mr. Griffith at least did not wait for the boom as one must vulgarly call it. His play was produced four Years ago, at a time when managers had made up their minds that people wanted to forget the War. I hope that it will now benefit to some extent by the renewed obsession, for it has excellent qualitiei. It has not the straightforwardness, the simple method, the unity of atmosphere that have made Journey's End easily intelligible by thousands. Like Mi. O'Casey's strange hodge- podge, it mingles realisin and reported fact with vision : the vision, for example, of German soldiers in ironic colloquy with British Tommies in a dug-out. A young airman comes upon his wounded and dying brother in a shell-hole. Action is abandoned : both " spout " against war. I think these scenes fail to impress. Others, at the Flying Corps Mess and at Army Corps Headquarters, present an admirably designed contrast between the fire and agony near, and the anxious quietude behind the lines. Particularly one scene—a duologue at dawn between two " passionate friends "—moves one strangely by its sincere and gentle matter-of-factness : the excitable Lieutenant St. Aubyn recounting the odd whims of his over-strained mind to Lieutenant Smith, whose mind is upon eggs and bacon. Of course, the eggs-and-bacon boy gets killed. It was harder for the other to survive.
-For the rest, Mr. Griffith shows himself no less expert than Mr. Sheriiff in conveying the just sense of utter futility and waste. And what could be better than his ending, the words murmured by the Brass Hat—" congratulations to all ranks " : words repeated from the latest heartbreaking message of simulated optimism from headquarters ?
After thii, the German side in Douaumont : a play aliout a Haunted-Man who returns with a hallucination derived from the awful days of Verdun ; a morbid Ulysses who finds his wife obliged to take in " suitors " as lodgers for a living. But where has he been in the interval ? Who, precisely, is he and what ? And who is she ? There are no details—. shadowy figures instead, all dominated by this soul in distress, who gradually communicates his delirium to them, forcing them out of their common ways, with his cries of " Douaumont, Douaumont and the war ! " We pass visibly into his mind and mania, in the last noisy and declamatory scene.
Most of it, I fear, is declamation and noise : matter, perhaps, for a war poem in Mr. Sassoon's best manner ; not for a play. We care about nobody, because we know nobody. Once more, it is seen how this apocalyptic style, discarding detail and character, leaves one disturbed—miserable, if you like—and yet, paradoxically, cold. Patience and self-control, please, war dramatists, if your thoughts of reminiscent hatred and disgust are to be a " message " for a world certainly very stupid, but at present in no immediate danger, thanks to you, of forgetting that there was a War !
RICHARD JENNINGS.
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