Oh What A Lovely War

In 1963 the legend that was Joan Littlewood had her final hurrah at the Theatre Royal Stratford with arguably her finest piece of theatre chronicling and satirising the appalling waste that was World War 1, 'The War To End All Wars'

Compiled from a collection of WW1 songs collected together by the BBC, Littlewood discarded the safe and vapid arrangements, instead encouraging her motley cast to sing them as though in they were 'stuck in the trenches, dirty, lousy, hungry, waiting for the next bomb to blow your heads off'. This gives the production a rawness interspersed with the necessary gallows humour that those going to certain death use to mask their fear. The story is largely put together using authentic sources; Haig's own speeches, church sermons, newspaper headlines and official statistics 'revealing the horrifying truths of which the country gradually became aware'.

Famously transferred to film by Sir Richard Attenborough (see, I knew I could get a Leicester reference in somewhere!) with an interstellar cast set on Brighton's West Pier, this timely revival has been touring since last year, the hundredth anniversary of the start of the massacre of the 10 million soldiers.

Set within the framework of a Pierrot show, a travelling band of clowns who sang and told stories typically in seaside Edwardian towns, there are plenty of nods to the film. The stage set is a pair of filigree stairs reminiscent of Brighton Pier's ironworks with clever use of backdrops, video footage, montages and an LED tickertape. A multitude of props fly on and off the busy stage as scenes change to various European countries and in an out of the trenches. Add to this the what must be hundreds of costumes, and you have a very hard working cast adeptly switching roles, accents and even languages at a pace that makes the head spin trying to follow them.

While the clowning of the white suited Pierrots may look harmless at first their satirical gambolling masks the unpalatable truth of the political posturing of the Officers and Politicians from the safety of their posts miles from the front line while thousand upon thousand of cannon fodder are routinely shipped out from home under the guise of 'doing their patriotic duty'.

A muti-talented cast of twelve are led by Ian Reddington and Wendi Peters, both late stalwarts of the soaps, both here showing their extreme versatility, and a live orchestra secreted in a traditional pit at the front of the stage.

First published in Western Gazette
(c) Paul Towers 14/4/2015