The enduring resonance of a classic First World War drama

When he arrived on Broadway with his production of Journey’s End, director David Grindley lacked some of the faith of the play’s backers who had taken it to the Great White Way.

“I had absolutely no idea how it was going to be received,” he says.

“At least here in England, even if you haven’t studied the play at school – which you probably have – the story is somehow in your DNA. The story of these men in the First World War trenches is part of our collective narrative. In the US it has absolutely no relevance, so even the actors I worked with had no frame of reference and the audience I imagined would be clueless.”

So how did the drama, written by RC Sherriff and based on his personal experiences of life in the trenches in France, go down on Broadway?

Remember that this is a quintessentially English play, about one of England’s great wartime tragedies, with anachronistic language like “beastly” and “topping”.

“In Broadway theatres the exit doors open right on to the street, and you can often in the theatre hear the noise of traffic and sirens and people shouting. That means that in turn the audiences tend to be quite loud. In the production there was this huge sense of silence. You could actually hear it. These American audiences sitting there, listening to everything and the quality of the silence was extraordinary.”

That is how good the production is and how well received it was in America.

It’s a nice addition to the CV of a director who had a reputation for directing comedy and whose biggest hit before Journey’s End came from his production of Abigail’s Party.

Grindley’s version of Journey’s End originally opened at the Comedy Theatre in London in January 2004. Grindley says it was a production designed to mark the 75th anniversary of the first production and while he avoids using the word cynical, he is clear that the producers wanted to “make the most of the anniversary, but were expecting it to run for eight weeks”.

The audience had other ideas. The production won huge critical acclaim and people kept coming back. The production transferred to the Playhouse Theatre, then the famous Duke of York’s before going on two major tours around the UK in 2004 and 2005 and then making the trip across the pond to New York. Along the way it was nominated for an Olivier and won Tony and Drama Desk awards. Grindley is clear about the success and the impact it had on him: “It is without doubt the biggest thing I’ve done in my career.”

The play, the producers probably imagined, would pull in an audience because it is studied on the school syllabus – Grindley admits as much when he says that the current UK tour, which brings the play to Leeds next week, will be bringing the story to life for a new generation.

“We last toured in the UK in 2005, so a whole new set of schoolchildren will have studied the play in between that last tour and now,” he says.

What was not expected was that the production would speak to a far wider audience, to people who wanted to see the play for itself and not because it would help them pass their GCSEs. Travelling to France to see the site of the unmarked graves and where so many thousands of men died was a turning point, says Grindley.

“I went with the designer and we realised that the claustrophobic nature of the trenches was really key,” he says. “We wanted to bring the audience into the trenches and show them real stories of these real characters. I think that’s what we managed to do.”

Background to wartime classic

Written in 1928, the first production of RC Sherriff’s Journey’s End featured a young Laurence Olivier.

A 1930 film version followed the successful production.

The play is set in the British trenches at St Quentin in 1918, in the days leading up to March 21, the last great German offensive of the First World War, a day that saw the deaths of 38,000 men.

Based on the author’s own experiences of the Front and life in the trenches, it celebrates without romance the lives of the men who fought in those conditions.

It remained the most famous of Sherriff’s plays. He went on to write the screenplays for Goodbye Mr Chips (1933), Odd Man Out (1947) and The Dam Busters (1955).

Journey’s End, Leeds Grand Theatre, May 17 to 21. Tickets 0844 848 2705.