Set in a British infantry dugout in the World War I trenches, Journey’s End centres around young Captain Stanhope and his officers who are all waiting for something meaningful to happen. At the Greenwich Theatre.
An impending German attack provides the time frame to clearly guide the plot, but the play is much more about the exploration of motives and characters rather than actions. It’s a rather long, pondering and episodic tale, but I would argue that this is intentional to create an understanding of the waiting game that must have played out in those trenches. And to “get” the piece the audience simply has to play along with the characters. For the better part of three hours we see the soldiers waiting for their next meal, waiting to go home, waiting to become a man, waiting to win the war, waiting for the next German attack, waiting for death and waiting for ways to try and cope with all of this.
Every friendship found on the front lines could be ended any moment by shrapnel from the other side. David Aldwyn as Stanhope gives a high octane performance that pretty much stays in the same register of anger or despair throughout. A man constantly on edge and afraid to form bonds with the men around him, he resorts to alcohol to drown out the terrors of war. Fairly early on he and the illness-faking Hibbert (convincingly played by Adam Fletcher) have an emotional breakdown about how they are both trapped between the duty to serve their country and the desperate desire to get out of the hell of war. What is playing out in front of our eyes is the complete failure of “stiff upper lip” as a coping strategy for human misery.
Liam Smith plays “Uncle” Osborne, a former school master who has ended up in the rabbithole-like madness of the World War I trenches and who, amongst all of the chaos and squalor, remains calm and serene. For me, his performance alone makes the show worth watching. In small gestures and seemingly throwaway anecdotes, the director and Smith have found the essence of what the piece seems to be about. When he and young Raleigh share a quiet moment in the officer’s quarters, it’s sad and touching without resorting to overbearing melodrama. When Osborne talks to him about gardening while the German grenades are about to explode around them, Matthew Pattimore as the naïve soldier Raleigh looks beautifully out of place – the mundane mixed into the state of expectation.
While some choose memories of their pre-war lives to keep sane, others resort to rather more tangible survival strategies. Steven George as Trotter has great comic timing while having to juggle all of the food his character is obsessed with. Only James Hender’s Colonel remains a slightly uninvolving stage presence. The set by Kemey Lafond is suitingly drab and gray, but some of the uniforms and boots could have done with a bit more mud for the sake of authenticity.
Touching upon so many issues relating to war, be it hero worship, duty or friendship, the play is by no means an easy watch, nor does it set out to be. But with such an oppressive piece everything could have been just a tad more involving and a bit more attention could have been paid to details that create atmosphere or establish characters. Some of the sound, light and other effects also felt like they were added on without necessarily supporting the story. On press night parts of the piece felt slightly underrehearsed, but no doubt the run will see much smoother performances; on the whole, the actors are doing a fabulous job portraying these tragic characters trapped in the trenches of a senseless war.