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Waiting in Existential Ennui
By Ben Brantley
- June 19, 2014
Many and contradictory are the claims that have been made for “Journey’s End,” the British playwright R. C. Sherriff’s 1928 portrait of life in the trenches and probably still the greatest of 20th-century English-language war dramas. It has been extolled and reviled as an impassioned plea for pacifism, a jingoistic celebration of homegrown heroes and an indictment of shortsighted military blundering.
Yet Sherriff (1896-1975), a former insurance adjuster who served as a captain on the Western Front near Ypres, Belgium, insisted he never tried to make a political statement with what became his first produced play. “I wrote it to satisfy myself alone,” he said in a speech in 1929. “I wanted to place on record one simple story of the war before memory died.”
That assertion helps account for the enduring power of “Journey’s End,” which received a Tony when it returned to Broadway in 2007. True, the play embraces elements that are now clichés of war narratives in theater and film, including an easily parodied assortment of barracks archetypes (the hysteric, the naïf, the upper-class alcoholic, the father figure).
But there was something revolutionary in the depiction of the soul-crippling boredom that remains so much of the soldier’s life. For “Journey’s End” is not a drama of action but of inaction.
Its characters, who don’t know when they’ll be summoned into battle, are confined to cramped quarters where the most exciting pastime is racing cockroaches.
They keep asking what time it is, hoping and fearing that their mandatory idleness will end, and falling into silences that breed dangerous thoughts about the meaning of it all. What’s truly subversive is the way this naturalistic play uses realism to create a sense of how surreal life becomes when examined, in empty silence, in the shadow of imminent death.
Listen to Captain Stanhope, who drinks himself into numbness, a role originated in London by Laurence Olivier: “D’you ever get a sudden feeling that everything’s going farther and farther away, till you’re the only thing in the world — and then the world begins going away, until you’re the only thing in the universe — and you struggle to get back — and can’t?” Utterly conventional in structure and dialogue, “Journey’s End” paradoxically anticipates the absurdists and existentialists who later reshaped the modern drama. Decades before Samuel Beckett presented life as an exercise in fruitless and ceaseless anticipation, Sherriff’s soldiers were already waiting for their own elusive Godot.
Journey’s End
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FirstproducedbytheIncorporatedStageSociety attheapollotheatre,Decembergth,1928,with thefollowingcast Stanhope--mr.laurengeolivier Osborne--mr.georgezucco Trotter--mr ...
Journey's End is a 1928 dramatic play by English playwright R. C. Sherriff, set in the trenches near Saint-Quentin, Aisne, towards the end of the First World War.The story plays out in the officers' dugout of a British Army infantry company from 18 to 21 March 1918, providing a glimpse of the officers' lives in the last few days before Operation Michael.
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. Set over a period of four days from 18th - 21st March 1918, it recounts the experiences of the officers of a British Army company.
Journey's End Robert Cedric Sherriff (1896-1975) served in the First World War as a Captain in the 9th East Surrey Regiment. He was wounded at Passchendaele in 1917 and awarded the M.C. Before and after the war Sherriff had worked as an insurance salesman and had no previous experience of the professional theatre.
R. C. Sherriff - Journey's End (1928) (2) - Free download as PDF File (.pdf) or read online for free. Scribd is the world's largest social reading and publishing site.
June 19, 2014. Many and contradictory are the claims that have been made for "Journey's End," the British playwright R. C. Sherriff's 1928 portrait of life in the trenches and probably ...
changing responses to R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End in three of the play's major runs in 1928-1930, 1972 and 2011. These three productions followed Sherriff's original script surprisingly closely, observing an officers' dugout in the days before a major German attack in 1918. The productions
Journey's End Summary. In the first scene of Journey's End, Osborne arrives in the British trenches of St. Quentin, France in the last year of World War I. He is the second-in-command of an infantry stationed only 70 yards from the trenches of their Germany enemies. The nature of this kind of military service is quite intense, so the ...
Journey's End, first performed in 1928-29, is based on playwright R.C. Sherriff's World War I experience as a Captain in Britain's East Surrey regiment. Set in the rat-infested trenches near St Quentin, France, in March 1918, the play makes reference to several World War I battles, weapons and combat terms.
Rowing Club. R.C. Sherriff composed and staged his first play in order to raise money for Kingston Rowing Club so that the organization could purchase a new boat. The Big Screen. Since it first premiered, Journey's End has been staged many, many times. In 2018, though, it was adapted as a feature film for the first time.
Journey's end by Sherriff, R. C. (Robert Cedric), 1896-1975. Publication date 1938 Publisher London : Victor Gollance Collection printdisabled; internetarchivebooks; americana Contributor Internet Archive Language English. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-02-12 18:09:56
Journey's End is a 1928 dramatic play by English playwright R. C. Sherriff, set in the trenches near Saint-Quentin, Aisne towards the end of the First World ...
Journey's End Written by R. C. Sherriff RC Sherriff's ground-breaking play remains one of the most powerful and successful pieces of modern drama and one of the most acclaimed examples of literature that deals with the tragedy and horror of conflict.
Robert Cedric Sherriff, FSA, FRSL (6 June 1896 - 13 November 1975) [1] was an English writer best known for his play Journey's End, [2] which was based on his experiences as an army officer in the First World War. [3] He wrote several plays, many novels, and multiple screenplays, and was nominated for an Academy Award and two BAFTA awards.
Journey's End - R C Sherriff Contents. Studying a Play Reading a novel or a poem is primarily a private activity, whereas a play is written to be performed by one group of people for another. When students study the text of Journey's End for the OCR Drama Unit, they should always remember that it was written for actors
Analysis. It is Monday, March 18th, 1918, and Captain Hardy is drying his wet sock over a candle flame. He sits in the dugout of the British trenches in St. Quentin, France, where the military is involved in trench warfare with German forces stationed only 70 yards away. As he dries his sock, Hardy sings a little ditty, mumbling, "Tick ...
Journey's end, a novel ... Journey's end, a novel by Sherriff, R. C. (Robert Cedric), 1896-1975; Bartlett, Vernon, 1894-1983, joint author. Publication date 1930 Topics World War, 1914-1918 Publisher New York, Frederick A. Stokes Co. Collection inlibrary; printdisabled; internetarchivebooks
This article examines newspaper reviews which highlight changing responses to R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End in three of the play's major runs in 1928-1930, 1972 and 2011. These three productions followed Sherriff's original script surprisingly closely, observing an officers' dugout in the days before a major German attack in 1918. The productions also proved highly successful in ...
Journey's End Written by R. C. Sherriff. Based on the book Sixteen Famous British Plays. Genre: Drama. ... Script Request Form. Theatre BC's script library is available for the exclusive use of our members in good standing. Use this form for script library script requests. Full Name * Please enter your first and last name. Email *
Summary. RC Sherriff's ground-breaking play remains one of the most powerful and successful pieces of modern drama and one of the most acclaimed examples of literature that deals with the tragedy and horror of conflict. Set over the course of four days leading up to a massive German attack on the British trenches in 1917, Journey's End charts ...
Listen to this episode from Nilkalaio on Spotify. To Read or Download Journey's End by R.C. Sherriff Visit Link Bellow You Can Download Or Read Free Books Link To ...