Word: journeys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...most harrowing battle scene in Journey's End, R.C. Sherriff's 1928 play about World War I now being revived on Broadway, comes with the stage entirely emptied of people. We're in a dugout in the British trenches in France, and two officers have just left to lead a dangerous raid into the German front lines. They must make a dash of 70 yards, grab a prisoner and return. All we hear is the offstage sound of explosions, machine-gun fire, the shouts of men. A puff of smoke wafts in from outside. Then it's over...
...most harrowing battle scene in Journey's End, R.C. Sherriff's 1928 play about World War I now being revived on Broadway, comes with the stage entirely emptied of people. We're in a dugout in the British trenches in France, and two officers have just left to lead a dangerous raid into the German front lines. They must make a dash of 70 yards, grab a prisoner and return. All we hear is the offstage sound of explosions, machine-gun fire, the shouts of men. A puff of smoke wafts in from outside. Then it's over...
...bunks are still warm; the bacon and tea are waiting. The men are gone for just three minutes. When they return, everything has changed. When it was first staged in London (starring Laurence Olivier and directed by James Whale, who went off to Hollywood and gave us Frankenstein), Journey's End was hailed as an antiwar statement. The playwright, who served in France during the war (and went on to write films like The Invisible Man and Goodbye, Mr. Chips), always disputed that assessment. In fact, seen today in the absolutely riveting new production directed by David Grindley (based...
...Polemics are the last thing Journey's End is interested in. The officers holed up in this dimly lit den on the eve of a major German offensive in March 1918 don't question the war or even talk much about it. They don't make speeches about lost comrades or pine for sweethearts back home whom they may never see again. They just eat and sleep, relieve one another on guard duty and complain about the meat cutlets. They do their duty, simply because there's nothing else...
...soldiers in Journey's End may be as doomed as the Japanese men who make a last stand in the caves of Iwo Jima. And the conflict they're caught up in may be as futile as the one Americans are wrestling with in 2007. But Sherriff's great play has no truck with anything as lofty as patriotism or sacrifice or even conscience. After it's all over, the bacon is still frying...