Before he wrote Journey's End, R C Sherriff was an insurance agent knocking out plays to raise funds for his local rowing club.
His 1928 masterpiece transformed his life. It may now seem old-fashioned but it remains authentic, drawing on his memories of service in France during the First World War - and in particular on his experience of trench warfare.
Through the story of a company of soldiers preparing for a German attack, Sherriff recreates the atmosphere of the dugout with its bantering companionship and submerged fear.
There's Osborne the quintessentially English schoolmaster, Trotter the jovial glutton, Mason the inexpert cook, the terrified Hibbert, fresh-faced new boy Raleigh and whisky-soaked, courageous Captain Stanhope, only three years older than Raleigh yet painfully intimate with the ugliness of conflict.
Their conversation isn't lit up by brilliant wit.
Instead it is mostly banal: its staples are girls, family, the awful food, and the creatures - rats and earwigs - with which they share their confinement. There are moments of introspection but Sherriff specialises in evoking a raw-boned boredom.
David Grindley's production is beautifully judged. Jonathan Fensom's candlelit set is a claustrophobic space that the nimble cast inhabit completely, and there's a skilful sound design by Gregory Clarke, which punctuates the eerie quietness with the distant rumble of heavy artillery and bursts of violent noise.
The ensemble work is impeccable, with precise performances from Dominic Mafham, Graham Butler and Christian Patterson, but it's James Norton as Stanhope who impresses most, communicating the complexities of a figure who is both anguished and heroic.
Sherriff has sometimes been accused of glorifying the efforts of patrician officers and ignoring the ordinary men. The charge isn't accurate, and the play's great achievement is its moving account of the sheer wastefulness of war. Here its understated power is fully realised.
Until September 3 (0844 871 7627).
Journey's End
The Duke Of York's
St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4BG
