OH WHAT A LOVELY WAR

Passionate theatregoers like me like to believe that great theatre can change the world. It doesn’t happen often, but Oh What A Lovely War, a satirical kneesup, in which cheeky and chipper trench songs are juxtaposed with deadly statistics and the savage reality, famously did much to alter attitudes to the First World War when it opened in 1963.

The military were particularly upset by its suggestion that the Tommys were lions led to their deaths by armybarmy donkeys. So the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Cobbold, whose job was to censor criticism of the British Establishment, went to see what the fuss was about. Fortunately, he took Princess Margaret, who thoroughly approved. ‘Those things should have been said many years ago – don’t you agree, Lord Cobbold?’ she said to Joan Littlewood, whose Theatre Workshop had concocted the piece based on Tommy’s Tunes, unearthed by a young radio producer whose 19 year old father had died in the war.

The show transferred to the West End, then Broadway, and later Richard Attenborough made it into an odd but extraordinarily starry movie mixing fact and fantasia.

Terry Johnson’s timely revival puts the play back where it started in the lovely Victorian jewel that is the Theatre Royal Stratford East, which is hung with Union Jack bunting. He also sticks closely to the spirit of the original, a vaudeville style sketch show staged by a troupe of seaside Pierrots, in white ruffled costumes with black pompoms, who put on hats and moustaches and play all the parts.

The average life of a subaltern on the Western Front is three weeks, reports the ticker tape above the stage. The final numbers: ‘Killed, 10 million; wounded, 21 million; missing, 7 million’ are too horrifying to get your head around.

Meanwhile, men who have barely started shaving sing Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag. It’s not subtle: the wounded are left to die (ambulances are for officers only) while a gathering of tweedy international warprofiteers shoot ‘grice’ on the Glorious Twelfth; French soldiers complain futilely that they are lambs to the slaughter and ‘baa’ (brilliantly) as they are shot.

The rough and ready approach is intentional but, with more military precision, the production could have hit more targets, and harder. Still, it’s impossible not to be seduced by a sequined Caroline Quentin’s dirty, flirty recruiting song: ‘I’m willing, if you’ll only take the shinning, to make a man of any one of you’, or to find a lump in your throat when three girls in gorgeous hats wave to their fellas, singing: ‘We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go’.

Until 15 March at Theatre Royal Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, London E15: 020-8534 0310, www.stratfordeast.com