All posts tagged with: Jennifer Ehle
Journey’s End
June 9, 2007 | Filed Under Theater | No Comments
On Wednesday, I went to Broadway to see Journey’s End – a play about the British in World War I. It is nominated tomorrow for a Tony.
And it will win the Tony.
And then it will close.
In fact I believe it is closing tomorrow, which is why I went last week. There have been very small audiences from what I read – sometimes only 25% capacity. Seems no one likes to see plays about war when there’s a war on.
And that is a crime because it was a very important production. Journeys End is an old warhorse of a play – going back to 1929. But it is rendered so soberly and straightforward that the anachronisms disappear. You are left with a stirring portrait of young men under the gun, fighting for their country in an impossible mission. These men are on the front line waiting for an imminent attack from the Germans. Then they learn the attack will come in two days. One of the sergeants asks the young commanding officer what the plans are. “We are to stick here”, he is told. “Yes but what if we can’t hold them or they overrun our flanks and surround us?” “We stick here. That is the only plan they gave us.” Rings a bell, doesn’t it? It’s a fool’s errand and they all know it, but they press on because that is the job.
The play was running at the Belasco Theater, which I have never been to before. [A moment of praise for all of NYC’s classic, old theaters! What a beautiful and intimate house. Supposedly haunted, too!] There was one set and the stage seems as cramped and claustrophobic as the play suggests. Like you are with them in the trenches. It was also very dark. I found myself squinting at times to see faces. Some scene changes happened in the light of a candle (real!) that sat on the table in most scenes. And the sound! The sound brought the terror of the war moving closer and closer into the play. At the end, the audience sat in darkness as the war came to us and it sounded as if the theater itself was under fire. The acting was also pitch perfect. All of the men were “types” but no one was a caricature. Each actor brought honesty and human emotions to their roles.
So – good luck to Journey’s End tomorrow – as well as Jennifer Ehle and Billy Crudup from Coast of Utopia.