The Hexagon

The Times Review -
R. C. Sheriff’s classic First World War drama had its premiere in the West End 81 years ago this month. For anyone who missed David Grindley’s acclaimed 2004 revival, both in the West End and on tour, this excellent new touring production by the Original Theatre Company and Icarus Theatre Collective offers a chance to catch up with a great piece of dramatic writing.

Although the setting is the rat-infested trenches at Saint-Quentin, France, in 1918, this well-crafted work retains a terrible relevance. Apparently Sheriff was quite put out that the play later acquired a reputation as an anti-war statement. What was intended, he insisted, was a study of men under pressure but motivated by a strong and unquestioning sense of duty. A good deal of the play’s power stems from the ambiguous tension between their circumstances and behaviour and all that remains unspoken between them about the bigger picture. The latter is, of course, the monumental ideological, socio-political and commercial machinery behind what they’re fighting for. That, however, wasn’t Sheriff’s concern.

All the action occurs in an officers’ dugout only 100 or so yards from the front line, and convincingly rendered by the designer Victoria Spearing. Word is that in a few short days the Germans will attack. But for the men living — or, if you choose to adopt the anti-war stance, waiting very possibly to die — in that grubby location, time passes with excruciating slowness in a round of eerily uneventful watches, uninspired meals and snatches of fitful sleep. (One of the alternative titles for the play was, tellingly, Waiting.) Sheriff is exceptionally good at balancing their wearying routine against the dramatist’s need to introduce and reveal his characters and then detonate the conflicts between them. The director Alastair Whatley taps into the playwright’s rhythms straightaway. He is blessed with a sterling ensemble headed by Christopher Harper as the dashing, desperately highly-strung young captain driven to drink to drown his nerves, Tom Hackney as the almost impossibly fresh-faced kid who just about worships him, and Graham Seed as an avuncular second-in-command with a touching fondness for reading Alice in Wonderland before heading into battle.

On the first night these and other admirably nuanced performances were already ringing true. But then, taking his cue from Sheriff, Whatley makes every role count, including his own one as an officer with a sarcastically stiff upper lip. He and his cast mine the script’s humour without impairing its ability to move us. Whatever its creator meant it to be, Journey’s End is a timepiece that still strikes at the waste of war - The Times.