“Journey’s End” Impresses Berlin

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 792, 12 October 1929, Page 26

“Journey’s End” Impresses Berlin

FIRST NIGHT SUCCESS GERMANS APPLAUD WAR PLAY “Journey’s End,” the English war play, was produced in Berlin with amazing success. At the end of the first act the curtain went up and down seven or eight times. At the end of the play it went up and down a dozen times, and the audience was still applauding when the iron curtain Was lowered. I “An emphatic hit,” a German said after the performance. “It is a very long time since I saw a Berlin first night like this one.” ! It was a remarkable evening, writes the critic of the “Daily Mail.” A few years ago it would have been an impossible evening. Here was a play about the British fighting the Germans, the whole of the action passing in the trenches, and a German audience not only sat through it with obvious and tense interest, btrt also expressed unmistakable approval of it. Officer With Iron Cross The audience was to an Englishman almost as interesting as the play. It was practically wholly German and surprisingly more than 50 per cent, feminine. Hundreds of young women and girls who could have been hut children during the war were in the theatre. I saw an ex-German officer with the Iron Cross fastened across the pocket of his dinner jacket. The author of the play, Mr. R. C. Sherriff, was there. “I am liking the performance very much,” Mr. Sherriff said. “They have had no help for the production and the version is not quite the same as ours, but the treatment is good.” At the finish Mr. Sheriff went on the stage and shook hands with various members of the company and bowed repeatedly to the loudly applauding audience. In London “Journey’s End” makes people cry. In Berlin “The Other Side” keeps them absorbed. Like Sir G. du Maurier It was supremely interesting to see an all-German company in the parts of British soldiers. With one or two exceptions they played their parts admirably. Mathias Wieman as Captain Stanhope reminded me of Sir Gerald du Maurier aged about 30. He is excellent. I liked the Osborne, that quiet schoolmaster that gets killed in a raid; the Trotter, whose ex-ranker humour went very well; and the cowardly Hibbert, whose emotional outbursts stopped the action of the play. “Journey’s End” will be presented in Auckland on October 30.