JOURNEY'S END. To 26 February.

London

JOURNEY'S END
by R.C. Sherriff

Duke of York's To 26 February 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Tue, Thu & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 45min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 060 6622
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 May

Old warhorses last longest, when as finely produced as here.Kim Durham reviewed this production when it opened at London's Comedy Theatre in January. With its main roles recast, it fits snugly in the attractive Playhouse Theatre on the Embankment.

Sherriff's structure is skilful; three acts with 1,2,3, scenes respectively help build momentum from the early routine to the final devastation, while high-tension moments are relieved by the next instalment of the cook Mason's attempts to provide and excuse onion-smelling tea or unidentifiable cutlets.

It's helped by the fluency of David Grindley's precise direction, which serves the script, playing its sole open-hand directorial intervention at the very end, once the Playhouse sound system has proved up to the battle and the front-drop curtain of royal portraits is replaced by the blackness of death.

There were sharper attacks on the war at the time of this play's premiere (1929) Richard Aldington's stories in Roads to Glory undermine heroics all-round. But Sherriff doesn't duck minor nuisances or great horrors. They're implied in the precence of Paul Bradley's fine (and, here, openly wounded) foodie officer Trotter.

This is spring 1918, not summer 1916. Trotter's a working-lad risen through the ranks, unlike the slightly over-age public school prefects who form the rest of the officer class.

By now there's room for Trotter to have a commission, since all the upper-class generals had led nearly all the upper-class captains and lieutenants to slaughter. Bradley and Pearce Quigley's cook have a different manner to each other than has Mason with the toffs. On the surface edgier, it hints at a shared understanding rooted in social class.

David Sturzaker doesn't whitewash Stanhope as simply school sports champ turned officer-in-charge. His anger becomes more erratic, alcohol-fuelled and self-protective as the action proceeds. He never looks more alone than when seated shouting at others. (At times, though, the voice could do with less one-toned boom.)

Ifan Meredith does well as the funked-up Hibbert. If anything, he seems too ready-made for the part, ferret-like, the cad of the 5th. Sherriff may have meant this, of course, but it plays to a particular view of men whose nerves finally tore.

This fine production doesn't quite erase memories of the close-up arena staging Eton College brought to the Edinburgh Fringe 3 years ago. It had an outstanding Stanhope, in whom conflicting emotions played intensely.

But this production has an outstanding performancce too, in 'uncle', the older schoolmaster-soldier Osborne. Philip Franks takes us into the character through minute, telling detail. Sent on a raid he knows is 'murder' he suddenly jumps into forced cheerfulness.

Then the eyes go distant; it's possible to imagine playing-fields where he's refereed being recalled from the slaughter-meadows where he's following so many he taught over the years.

Stanhope is angry with new officer Raleigh (another clear, if perhaps too typical, performance) for seeing his old schoolfriend in this drunken, nerve-stretched state.

His last rage, though, conceivably expresses anger that Raleigh, but not Osborne, returned safe from the raid which brought a German soldier back with valuable information (Max Berendt fearful - the enemy seen as human).

Yet Stanhope's anger subsides. For in the long-term - or, here, the not-so-long - we're all dead.

Captain Hardy/Sergeant Major: Charles Daish
Lieutenant Osborne: Malcolm Sinclair
Private Mason: Paul Brightwell
2nd Lieutenant Raleigh: Peter Sandys-Clarke
Captain Stanhope: Brendan Patricks
2nd LieutenantTrotter: Ian Burfield
Private Albert Brown/A Private: Rob Heanley
2nd Lieutenant Hibbert: Rufus Wright
Colonel: John Elmes
German Soldier: Ralph Gassmann
Lance Corporal Broughton: Paul Benzing

Director: David Grindley
Designer: Jonathan Fensom
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Fight director: Paul Benzing
Dialect coach: Majella Hurley

2004-05-21 09:31:40