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Stanhope asks if Osborne will monitor Raleigh’s letters for any bad words said about him. Osborne, who everyone calls “Uncle,” refuses. When Stanhope responds by getting very drunk, Osborne helps him get into bed and sleep it off. Everyone knows that Stanhope should take the vacation time (like Captain Hardy) and recover a bit, but Stanhope insists it’s his duty to remain near the front line.
Stanhope confiscates a letter from Raleigh, insisting on his right to censor it. Stanhope is in a relationship with Raleigh's sister and is worried that, in the letter, Raleigh will reveal Stanhope's growing alcoholism. Full of self-loathing, Stanhope accedes to Osborne's offer to read the letter for him. The letter is, in fact, full of praise for Stanhope. The scene ends with Stanhope quietly demurring from Osborne's suggestion to re-seal the envelope. The seemingly mundane conversations between the officers worked perfectly to convey the monotony on the front. There’s one scene where several characters are waiting until they must go over the dugout and into no man’s land, and each minute is excruciatingly counted down. They try to fill the space with small talk, but they can’t; they’re about to go on a suicide mission. It’s one of the tensest scenes I’ve read. The play was televised by the BBC Television Service, live from its Alexandra Palace studios, on 11 November 1937, in commemoration of Armistice Day. Condensed into a one-hour version by the producer George More O'Ferrall, some short sequences from the film Westfront 1918 (1930) by G. W. Pabst were used for scene-setting purposes. Reginald Tate starred as Stanhope, with Basil Gill as Osborne, Norman Pierce as Trotter, Wallace Douglas as Raleigh, J. Neil More as the Colonel, R. Brooks Turner as the Company Sergeant-Major, Alexander Field as Mason, Reginald Smith as Hardy, and Olaf Olsen as the young German soldier. Because it was broadcast live, and the technology to record television programmes did not exist at the time, no visual records of the production survive other than still photographs. [19]Vahimagi, Tise (1994). British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.8. ISBN 978-0-19-818336-5. Other plays of the period dealing with the war tended to be judged by the standard of Journey's End. [21] The play and its characters also influenced other writers. In 1930, Noël Coward briefly played the role of Stanhope while on tour in the Far East. He did not consider his performance successful, writing afterwards that his audience "politely watched me take a fine part in a fine play and throw it into the alley." [22] However, he was "strongly affected by the poignancy of the play itself", and was inspired to write Post-Mortem, his own "angry little vilification of war", shortly afterwards. [23]
Curtis, James (1998). James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters. Boston: Faber and Faber. p.71. ISBN 0-571-19285-8. Walters, Emily Curtis (2016). "Between entertainment and elegy: the unexpected success of R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End (1928)". Journal of British Studies. 55 (2): 344–73. doi: 10.1017/jbr.2016.3. During the Second World War, productions were staged by members of the Royal Natal Carbineers at El Khatatba, Egypt (January 1944); and by British prisoners in Changi Prison, Singapore (February 1943); at Tamarkan, Thailand, a Japanese labour camp on the Burma Railway (July 1943); in Stalag 344, near Lamsdorf, Germany (July 1944); and in Campo P.G. 75, near Bari, Italy. [14]But I love the theatre and I’ve wanted to read Journey’s End for a while now because I’ve heard it was beautiful and tragic. And they are my favourite adjectives when it comes to literature. The play was adapted for television in 1988, starring Jeremy Northam as Stanhope, Edward Petherbridge as Osborne, and Timothy Spall as Trotter. [20] It held close to the original script although there were changes, the most obvious being the depiction on camera of the raid, which happens off-stage in the theatre production. Stanhope also becomes angry at Raleigh, who did not eat with the officers that night but preferred to eat with his men. Stanhope is offended by this, and Raleigh eventually admits that he feels he cannot eat while he thinks that Osborne is dead, and his body is in No Man's Land. Stanhope is angry because Raleigh had seemed to imply that Stanhope did not care about Osborne's death because Stanhope was eating and drinking. Stanhope yells at Raleigh that he drinks to cope with the fact that Osborne died, to forget. Stanhope asks to be left alone and angrily tells Raleigh to leave. Osborne's death, however, i was not expecting (i probably should've). and what made it even worse was remembering the things he'd said about his wife and his life with her, and giving Stanhope his stuff. AND THEN STANHOPE'S BREAKDOWN WHEN HE ARGUES WITH RALEIGH. i was in tears.
It is decided that Osborne and Raleigh will be the officers to go on the raid, despite the fact that Raleigh has only recently entered the war. Sherriff, R. C. (1929). Journey's End, a Play in Three Acts (Firsted.). New York: Brentano's. OCLC 1490502. March marks the 100th anniversary of Germany’s final offensive of World War I, which sent 74 divisions of German troops against the Allied lines over a 60-mile front, preceded by a five-hour artillery barrage of a million shells. More than half a million men died on both sides.
A gentleman’s game?
The three-act play has themes of courage, innocence, human vanity, and mortality. The captain of this company and the protagonist of the play is named Dennis Stanhope. At no point do we leave the dugout, not even to enter the war's notorious trenches per se, yet sounds of the war are heard throughout every scene. It's a claustrophobic, intense situation and story. Apparently Sherriff originally wanted to title it Suspense or Waiting, which are actually better titles in some ways.
IWM holds a vast archive of unique documents dating from 1914 to the present day. Among the archives that we hold is the original manuscripts of the play, Journey's End by R.C. Sheriff. Journey's End was based on Sheriff's own experiences as an army officer in the First World War. The story plays out over four days, the 18th to the 21st of March 1918, the start of the German Spring Offensive. At the end of the First World War and during the years that followed, many authors, artists and playwrights responded to the conflict through their work. One such example is the play Journey’s End by R C Sherriff. Written by R C Sherriff in 1927, Journey’s End draws on the playwright’s experience of combat in the First World War. Set in an officers’ dugout over a period of four days in 1918, it is a story of comradeship, fear and heroism. Purkis, Charlotte (2016). "The mediation of constructions of pacifism in Journey's End and The Searcher, two contrasting dramatic memorials from the late 1920s". Journalism Studies. 17 (4): 502–16. doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2015.1135753. The play is the basis for the film Aces High (1976), although the action was switched from the infantry to the Royal Flying Corps.
I don’t normally read plays because they seem to unleash a wave of high school-related memories and trying to think of quotes and line numbers and acts and basically getting myself into a tizzy. This play reminded me of the preface that Wilfred Owen wrote: “This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.”
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