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But it’s doubtful whether Sherriff aimed to create a fully fledged pacifist drama. He originally planned to write a novel focusing on the relationship between Stanhope and a new young recruit, James Raleigh (played by Asa Butterfield) – a school friend who loves him. It’s an intense relationship which made it onto the stage and is symptomatic of how, throughout the play, it’s the interactions between the soldiers that primarily interest Sherriff. The seemingly mundane conversations between the officers worked perfectly to convey the monotony on the front. There’s one scene where several characters are waiting until they must go over the dugout and into no man’s land, and each minute is excruciatingly counted down. They try to fill the space with small talk, but they can’t; they’re about to go on a suicide mission. It’s one of the tensest scenes I’ve read. One of my favourite play writes, I tend to stay away from WW1 fictional content as I don't believe that something so horrific can be explained through fiction. WW1 fiction is always either one of two things: extremely unrealistic but fun to read or extremely unrealistic to the point where you are debating wether the Great War actually taught people anything.
The three-act play has themes of courage, innocence, human vanity, and mortality. The captain of this company and the protagonist of the play is named Dennis Stanhope. The days up to, and including, the start of the battle are portrayed in the recent film adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s classic World War I play, Journey’s End – which premiered in 1928. Adapted by Simon Reade and directed by Saul Dibb, the movie has all the familiar features you’d expect of a piece about the “Great War”: a frontline dugout, mud everywhere and a foolhardy raid on a German trench during which seven men die. Journey's End” (1928), by English playwright Robert Cedric (R.C.) Sherriff, follows a group of British army troops in the days leading to Operation Michael, which was the last offensive operation from Germany that would mark the beginning of the end of WWI. Performed for more than two years in London, the play was one of the most popular productions of the 1920s. The work is based off of his own experience in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) during WWI. maybe i'm just sensitive today, cause i'm not an easy crier. or maybe this play is just like that. i don't know.
A gentleman’s game?
And a lot of people may dismiss the scenes and the conversations as slow but I think that is the whole point and what makes the. In the films set around WW1 there is always something happening, shells exploding, machine guns hammering but in reality there was a lot of time where the men were just waiting.
In September 2018 a production was staged by Fintry Amateur Dramatic Society (FADS), in "The Studio", a converted barn outside Killearn, Stirling. [17] Adaptations [ edit ] Film [ edit ] Written by R C Sherriff in 1927, Journey’s End draws on the playwright’s experience of combat in the First World War. Set in an officers’ dugout over a period of four days in 1918, it is a story of comradeship, fear and heroism. Stanhope also becomes angry at Raleigh, who did not eat with the officers that night but preferred to eat with his men. Stanhope is offended by this, and Raleigh eventually admits that he feels he cannot eat while he thinks that Osborne is dead, and his body is in No Man's Land. Stanhope is angry because Raleigh had seemed to imply that Stanhope did not care about Osborne's death because Stanhope was eating and drinking. Stanhope yells at Raleigh that he drinks to cope with the fact that Osborne died, to forget. Stanhope asks to be left alone and angrily tells Raleigh to leave.
The play is the basis for the film Aces High (1976), although the action was switched from the infantry to the Royal Flying Corps.
The new film, despite its power – and, as film critic Mark Kermode noted, its determination to be “cinematic” by opening things out – can’t but help retain this emphasis.
Other plays of the period dealing with the war tended to be judged by the standard of Journey's End. [21] The play and its characters also influenced other writers. In 1930, Noël Coward briefly played the role of Stanhope while on tour in the Far East. He did not consider his performance successful, writing afterwards that his audience "politely watched me take a fine part in a fine play and throw it into the alley." [22] However, he was "strongly affected by the poignancy of the play itself", and was inspired to write Post-Mortem, his own "angry little vilification of war", shortly afterwards. [23] Sherriff had trouble getting Journey's End produced in the West End, writing that "Every management in London had turned the play down. They said people didn't want war plays [...] 'How can I put on a play with no leading lady?' one [theatre manager] had asked complainingly." [1] Sherriff used No Leading Lady as the title of his autobiography, published in 1968. I loved the characters, each and every one of them feeling real to me. Complex Stanhope with his inner conflicts and extremely human fears, the dark humorous banter between Osborne and Mason, Hibbert and his terror, the ever changing relationship between Stanhope and the young Raleigh, the enthusiastic, optimistic officer who becomes more and more disillusioned when he begins the truth and sees what happens to men who are fighting. The play was adapted for television in 1988, starring Jeremy Northam as Stanhope, Edward Petherbridge as Osborne, and Timothy Spall as Trotter. [20] It held close to the original script although there were changes, the most obvious being the depiction on camera of the raid, which happens off-stage in the theatre production. Sherriff, R. C. (1929). Journey's End, a Play in Three Acts (Firsted.). New York: Brentano's. OCLC 1490502.
Stanhope asks if Osborne will monitor Raleigh’s letters for any bad words said about him. Osborne, who everyone calls “Uncle,” refuses. When Stanhope responds by getting very drunk, Osborne helps him get into bed and sleep it off. Everyone knows that Stanhope should take the vacation time (like Captain Hardy) and recover a bit, but Stanhope insists it’s his duty to remain near the front line. a b c d e f g h i Sherriff, Robert Cedric (1968). No Leading Lady: An Autobiography. London: Victor Gollancz. pp.39, 9, 43–44, 45, 52, 49, 70–76, 129, 130, 181. ISBN 978-0-575-00155-8.
Second Lieutenant Raleigh, a wide-eyed young man, joins the company after requesting to be stationed near Captain Stanhope. Stanhope (whom he calls by the familiar name Dennis) is dating his sister Madge. He figures that Stanhope will be happy to see a familiar face; instead, he’s enraged that Raleigh would intrude on his life. But the real reason for his objection is that he fears Raleigh will write to his sister that her fiancé is becoming an alcoholic. Raleigh can’t believe what the last three years of military service have done to the previously kind and light-hearted Stanhope. I loved the exploration of the disconnect between the idyllic boarding-school days before the war (talk of rugby, holidays, and schoolboy idols) and the grim reality the characters face. There’s a kind of guilt and delicate avoidance of the topic, because things will never be the same again. It reminded me of Hartley’s opening line from The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” Every now and then I want to read a play; as for this one, I don't know how I 'found it.' It was recently made into a movie, but I hadn't watched it, or known of its existence. I might have discovered it here on Goodreads... Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.8. ISBN 978-0-19-818336-5. Geoffrey Dearmer of the Incorporated Stage Society suggested that Sherriff send the script to George Bernard Shaw, because a good word from him would convince the ISS committee to stage it. [1] Shaw replied that, like other sketches of trench life, it was a "useful [corrective] to the romantic conception of war", and that "As a 'slice of life' – horribly abnormal life – I should say let it be performed by all means". [1] Colin Clive as Stanhope in the 1929 production of Journey's End, directed by James Whale
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