CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
Journey's End. By R. C. Sherrill. (Westminster.) T still stands out very clear and sharp, this picture of life in a front- line dug-out in igj8, and we can see why it impressed us as a master- piece nearly a quarter of a century ago. Why does it now seem to us a little false, a little over-stated : a work whose faithful realism cannot disguise a betrayal of reality ?
Is it because—in this rather lightweight production, anyhow—there are too many blacks and too many whites, so that we, knowing now a very little of war, cannot square this bold pepper-and-salt design with the herring-bone texture—at once much drabber and much more complex—of our memories ? It is true that you need plenty of black and white to make a play ; but need Mr. Sherriff have segregated them so carefully when he drew his characters ? If only it had been Osborne, the gentle, noble ex-schoolmaster, who carried the dirty postcards in his pocket instead of Hibbert, the coward ! If only Hibbert, and not Osborne, had once played Rugger for England. If only— But it is too late to re-write, now, what is after all a highly effective play. At the Westminster Theatre it is acted conscientiously, but Mr. Peter Rendall's Stanhope is never an over-wrought company com- mander, but only an actor intelligently portraying one. Mr. David Oake and Mr. Neil Wilson do well enough as Raleigh and Trotter (it should have been Trotter, of course, who read Alice in Wonderland), but only Mr. Harold Young as the Colonel brings for a moment into the blacks and whites a glimpse of the authentic, aimless grey of war.
PETER FLEMING.
Previous page
