Journey’s End

R.C.Sheriff’s play is set in the officer’s dug-out of a British infantry company in the trenches facing Saint Quentin. It is the 18th of March, 1918, and in just a few days, the German army will begin Operation Michael, the opening of Ludendorff’s Spring offensive intended to push the British Expeditionary Force into the sea and capture the Channel ports. For the Germans, it is the last roll of the dice in the Great War, which has been going on since August 1914 and wiped out a generation of young men across the continent. In the trenches, the constant threat of death and the fear that generates, along with the loss of friends and comrades, has deeply affected every man there, and each deals with it in their own way. Captain Stanhope leads the infantry company, with a keen sense of duty but a growing dependence on alcohol to cope with the pressures of command. When the young and naive Raleigh joins the company, his precarious balance is disturbed…

After it was written, Sheriff encountered resistance in getting the play produced in London’s West End. There was a reluctance to put on a play about the war, which having ended just ten years previously, was all too fresh in people’s minds. Others baulked at the idea of a play without a leading lady, which would hinder ticket sales. Eventually, the Independent Stage Society were persuaded, after some words from George Bernard Shaw, to put it on at the Apollo Theatre. They still hedged their bets. It was a ‘semi-staged’ production, meaning no sets and minimal props, and would run for just two nights. The lead, Captain Stanhope, would be played by a 21 year old unknown…called Lawrence Olivier. However, when the curtains finally rose on the evening of Sunday, December 9, 1928, in the audience was Maurice Brown, a West End producer. He was impressed, enough at least to take a gamble on booking it to open at the Savoy Theatre on January 21, 1929. Even then, it received minimal promotion and no advance bookings were taken. However, word of mouth was enough, and ‘Journey’s End’ sold out, and proceeded to run for a further two years to packed houses.

Sheriff himself didn’t see the play as being expressly an anti-war piece, rather it was an account of his own experiences. He’d been only 18 when he’d gone to France as a Captain in the 9th East Surrey Regiment, and fought at Vimy, Loos and Passchendaele, where he was severely wounded. He’d written other plays and would go on to write more, though ‘Journey’s End’ remained his most famous stage work. He’d go on to write screenplays too, receiving an Academy (Oscar) nomination for ‘Goodbye, Mr Chips’ (1939) and a BAFTA nomination for ‘The Dambusters’ (1955).