 Our November 2009 production at the Landmark Theatre, Ilfracombe, North Devon was Oh, What A Lovely War!, the ever-popular war game with songs, jokes and a few battles!
Set as a pierrot show combining the songs that united the ordinary soldiers of the Great War with a wry look at the politicians and officers in charge of the carnage, projected images and shocking statistics of the war on the Western Front contrast with the comedy action taking place on the stage in this 1960s satire which achieved West End success.
Throughout the action the ensemble cast sang well-known songs including
- Belgium Put the Kaibosh on the Kaiser
- Hold Your Hand Out You Naughty Boy
- Goodbye-ee, Row Row Row
- I’ll Make a Man of You
- It’s a Long Way to Tipperary
- Christmas Day in the Cookhouse
- Keep the Home Fires Burning
- Oh, It’s a Lovely War
many with humorous lyrics adapted by the soldiers in the trenches.
We saw the volunteers struggle to learn combat drill, watched the Tommies mingle with their German counterparts during the Christmas ‘truce’ and gaped at the great European nations as their monarchs, politicians and generals stumbled into the morass resulting in four years of pointless trench warfare.
First staged in 1963 and devised by Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop, Oh, What a Lovely War! was influenced by the late Alan Clark’s military history ‘The Donkeys’ as well as by ‘The Good Soldier Svejk’ by Czech humourist Jasoslav Hasek.
Studio Theatre’s cast of 20 shared the roles of soldiers, nurses, monarchs, generals, officers, secret police and more from the pre-war empires of Europe, accompanied on the joanna by Mike Riley and commanded from the safety of the auditorium by director Lee Baxendale.
Performances were at the Landmark Theatre in Ilfracombe, North Devon on Thursday 5 and Friday 6 November 2009.
Read the North Devon Journal review. |
Oh, What A Lovely War!
Oh, What a Lovely War! cast
