Hold onto your shrapnel helmets. The Village Repertory Company has unleashed a bracing look at World War I in Journey’s End, the 1928 dramatic work by R.C. Sherriff offering an intimate vantage on the horrors of the first Great War.
Directed by Keely Enright and featuring an ensemble cast of top local talent, the commendable production is in partnership with Threshold Repertory Theatre, taking place at the latter’s Society Street venue through May 18.
During World War I, crouching in trenches a few fatal paces from the frontline was famously punishing. One attack in particular made an indelible mark on the British national psyche, the Battle of St. Quentin Canal, in northern France, which played out on March 21, 1918.
In Journey’s End, the action is just outside the entry of a front-line-proximate dugout. Within, a few veteran officers and a fresh-faced newcomer await orders to face the enemy. In the moments between, they bunk down, break bread and hit the bottle, too.
The dug-out is a set designer’s marvel — designed by Enright, finessed by Julie Ziff and realized by Dave Reinwald, it is distressed deftly and rendered authentically grimy and drear, lending greatly to the overall character of the work. An entry way upstage center serves as a portal to the destruction just beyond those walls, which audience members hear in an escalating cacophony of fusillades, and see in short blasts of light, all to great effect.
But the weight and grip of this work rests with the performances. An all-male ensemble comes together to relive the decimating wartime event that weighed heavily on England for years beyond it, remaining a particularly somber note in history books for decades hence.
Poignant performances
The Village Rep production is largely up to the challenge, starting with its central figure of Captain Stanhope, as performed with poignancy by Ben Hudd. Stanhope is every inch the modern captain, a born leader sure of purpose and a seemingly steady hand at the helm. But the relentless threat has taken its toll, making it impossible for him to carry on without escaping with whisky, and his weakness in that arena is getting around the rank and file.
Stanhope’s shame over this human frailty is compounded when a young officer named Raleigh, played with heartbreakingly youthful sparkle by Sam Daniel, joins them. The two, it turns out, share a connection in their pasts. And while the 2nd Lieutenant Raleigh is eager for action and brimming with admiration for his commanding officer, the last thing Stanhope wanted was to meet him at the frontlines.
Both of these characters get an able assist from the avuncular, measured Lieutenant Osborne, who is devoted to Stanhope and paternal to young Raleigh, portrayed with nuanced geniality by Paul O’Brien. Add to this mix a bit of comic relief, by way of two 2nd Lieutenants, the food-focused Trotter (Kyle Downs) and the neurotic Hibbert (John Black), as well as a good-natured cook by the name of Private Mason, who goes down easy by way of Jeffrey Johnson.
Together, they each succeed in forging an emotional bond with one another and with the audience, both crucial to render dramatic the tragic unfolding of the event. Statistics of war can be chilling, to be sure, but giving a soul to the flesh and blood is what furthers the work’s painful arc. As more and more casualties mount in our own headlines today, we can all likely see the efficacy of putting a face on the body count.
Since the play is based on historical events, there is no spoiler alert needed to flag their terrible fate. But the steps we take through a richly wrought story animated by a fine cast leads us to the end of our own journey, seated in darkness at a downtown Charleston theater.
We have come to know these long-ago lost soldiers, huddled in a dug-out on the brink of disaster. And, in Journey’s End, like the tallies that mount on the world stage today, to know them is to grieve them.
Maura Hogan is the founder of Culture South. Journey’s End runs at Village Repertory (Woolfe Street Playhouse) until May 18. Tickets are $25-35 at woolfestreetplayhouse.com.
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