OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR

Up to your waist in water,
Up to your eyes in slush –
Using the kind of language,
That makes the sergeant blush;
Who wouldn’t join the army?
That’s what we all inquire,
Don’t we pity the poor civilians sitting beside the fire.

Oh! Oh! Oh! it’s a lovely war…

And so starts Joan Littlewood’s brilliant World War I musical, although perhaps the word musical is misplaced here. This is a tragedy with songs. It would seem that theatrical innovator and genius Littlewood was initially against creating a play about war and had to be persuaded to embark on the project. But when she had heard the songs that had been collected as Tommy’s Tunes, popular songs and hymns with subversive lyrics penned by soldiers on the battlefields and in the trenches she changed her mind and with her Theatre Workshop company set about creating a piece of theatre that was brilliant and new.

That was in 1962 some 63 years and several wars ago. It’s anti-war and antiestablishment message could not have been more clear and yet over six decades later how chilling it is to sit at Brighton Open Air Theatre and see and realise how little humankind has learnt about the gruesome futility of war, about greed, about privilege, about loss and about how those men and women actually believed in the fight.

Some years back I was invited to travel to northern France to see the battlefields of The Somme and Paschendale. It was the most extraordinary experience, one I am glad to have had but one that left me feeling so terribly sad and one I hope never to have to do again, not from denial but because it will never leave me. Trenches and tunnels, chapels and graveyards, tombs for as far as the eye can see, blasted landscapes, lush green, fertilised by the blood and bones of those many millions lost in conflict.

Why am I writing this in a review of a play you may well ask? Well in an age where wars are still being fought, but now using scary modern technologies, it’s good to be reminded that all conflicts carry death tolls, military and civilian.

Littlewood’s masterpiece sought not only to describe the futility and human loss but also the commmercial and political machinations behind that global attrocity. Sitting comfortably in our beautiful open air theatre, sipping wine, eating picnics it soon became uncomfortable as we realise what is being presented. Current world politics, wars of all kinds… little has changed. It didn’t take long for the audience to sense the sadness of this piece, which, couched in the gentle form of a seaside Pierrot show, soon turned into sharp satire.

It’s an ambitious piece of theatre and here, in the capable hands of directors Nettie Sheridan and Gary Cook and their extraordinary Identity Theatre company, it is so brilliantly brought to life. Fifteen players take on the many roles, from privates and nurses to generals and politicians. The songs are performed as if by ordinary people and not by west end musical stars, the choreography is the same, and as such it has a warmth and humanity. You could sing those songs for laughs, of course you could, some of the lyrics are very funny but… they are not there to make we the audience smile, but to kick us firmly in the backside and remind us of how many young men and women, on all sides of what was tragically called “the war to end all wars” was, in truth, an appalling waste of human life, and that the lesson was not learnt.

A word here for musical director Maria Dunn’s very effective keyboard  accompaniment, never overplayed but always adding the right level of atmosphere. They could have used a band but that would have been much less effective, the simplicity employed worked so much better.

This should be a school curriculum must see!!! How timely and how poignant it is to see this remarkable piece of innovative theatre revived by a local company who give it their all. By the end, as the sun set and the early summer cool of night set in, the chill was not just physical.

Andrew Kay

11 June

Brighton Open Air Theatre

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