Little joy in this Lovely War
As the audience enters the Royal George Theatre for “Oh What a Lovely War,” they’re met with a video projection of the same room they’re sitting in, only empty. Soon enough the cast strolls on stage and regales us with some local history, including how men about to head off for the First World War sat in this exact theatre a century ago, hoping for some light entertainment before living in the trenches.
As the cast speaks, ghostlike figures appear on screen and take their seats. The audience feels like it’s peering into a time portal.
If only anything over the next two-and-a-half hours was as remotely cool.
Joan Littlewood’s scattershot musical was many things when it premiered on stage in 1963 — counterculture, diverse, improvisational. It was not what British
audiences expected from a show about the First World War, just 18 years removed from the second one.
The hurdle with the Shaw Festival’s production, which opened Wednesday, is that it can’t possibly recapture what felt so different 55 years ago. It offers amends by shifting some of the stories and characters to Canada, and keeping constant photos and old wartime movie clips playing on the screen behind the cast, but the show’s clumsy structure and moralizing feels like a struggle throughout.
By the end, you’re told what you already know — the First World War was a global tragedy in which millions of people needlessly died.
Using several trite songs and interchangeable characters, director Peter Hinton’s take on the show abides by Littlewood’s intentions: To draw the audience in with sentiment and jingoism, then dump the full horror of war
on them. The cast is bright and energetic early on, bouncing around quick vignettes telling us how the chess board was set and who was aligned with who. Everyone is optimistic this skirmish with upstart Germany will be over by Christmas.
It doesn’t take long for reality to set in, and the first act ends with the famed Christmas truce, in which forces on both sides
crossed trenches to mingle and exchange gifts. It remains a sad and haunting side story of the war, as we know most if not all of them would be killed by the men they just spent Christmas Eve with.
As the various stories are told, there’s a running tally of the war’s casualties to the left of the stage. It’s minimal at first. Before long, thousands are added each day. The ensemble cast, which includes strong Shaw players like Marla McLean and Allan Louis, often balance joy and misery in the same scene. They’re told there’s a train waiting to take the wounded to hospital … only for them to be stitched up and sent back out.
The show’s second act is meant to stir both anger and tears as millions are sent to the frontlines meat grinder and the war profiteers toast their newfound wealth. But it grows exhausting as it passes the two-hour mark without a central plot or cast of
characters to cling to. It resembles a compact history lesson more than a play, the same thing that plagued last season’s haphazard show about Canadian upheaval, “1837: The Farmer’s Revolt.” These two shows feel like spiritual cousins.
“Oh What a Lovely War” ends up another casualty of this frustrating season at Shaw — the most tedious in a decade, reliant on gimmicky shows and not enough full-length plays. It also indulges, once again, in audience interaction and fourth-wall breaking — a trend that has grown beyond tiresome in artistic director Tim Carroll’s second season.
There’s hope, however: One of the two remaining shows to open this season features Sherlock Holmes. Perhaps he can solve the mystery of what went wrong this year.