One hundred years ago the lights were going out all over Europe. This legendary musical entertainment, based on the songs and statistics of the First World War, was created by Joan Littlewood, Charles Hilton, Gerry Raffles and members of the original cast at Stratford East in 1963. Staged within an improvised and audience-friendly, end-of-pier Pierrot Show framework, it was one of the great theatrical successes of the 1960’s and an outstanding example of anti-war propaganda. It had an enormous emotional impact. Terry Johnson’s timely revival is in the same vein as the original production and is a fitting commemoration of the Great War and, simultaneously, a tribute to Joan Littlewood whose centenary it also is.
The show looks at the war from the point of view of the men in the trenches. Behind the actors on screens are projected familiar recruiting posters, photographs and newsreels of the troops in the front line. Most devastating are the constant recordings of the appalling fatalities on a dot matrix news panel: “Battle of the Somme. British lose 65,000 men in the first three hours. Gain: Nil.” The bitterest satire is reserved for the millionaire profiteers, the Church and Field Marshal Earl Haig, commander-in-chief, who is not squeamish about using the men as cannon fodder, confident that Britain will eventually win, because they have more men to lose than the Germans. “Don’t worry,” says a nurse, comforting the wounded, “we’ll have you back in the front line within a week.”
There are many heartbreaking moments, such as the cavalry’s pathetic charge against machine guns, recreated in mime, and the French soldiers (lambs for slaughter) literally marching into battle baa-ing like sheep. The bayonet drill-sergeant’s gibberish on the parade ground is one of the great comedy routines. The most moving scene is the fraternisation between the British and German soldiers in No Man’s Land at Christmas. The use of the songs of the era – nostalgic music hall songs (“Adieu la vie”), recruiting songs (“We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go”) and lewd barrack-room ballads (“I don’t want to be a soldier”) – are an essential part of the show’s enduring success .