50 Favourite Musicals: 49: OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR! (1963) (various)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

First performed: 1963, Theatre Workshop, Stratford East
First seen by me: 1998, Roundhouse, London

Productions seen: three

Score: various

Book: Joan Littlewood / Theatre Workshop / Charles Chilton / Gerry Raffles / Ted Allen

Plot: The savagery and foolishness of the Western Front in World War I is performed by a troupe of Pierrots.

Five memorable numbers: I'LL MAKE A MAN OF YOU; GOOD-BYE-EE; OH, WHAT A LOVELY WAR; THEY WERE ONLY PLAYING LEAPFROG; AND WHEN THEY ASK US

Although Richard Attenborough's heavy-handed film version - loathed by Joan Littlewood - is probably more well known, the original still retains it's ability to freeze the smile on your face at it's depictions of the carnage on the Western Front during WWI.  Littlewood's partner Gerry Raffles had heard Charles Chilton's radio programme on the songs sung in the trenches and commissioned a script which Littlewood ditched.  She wanted her Theatre Workshop actors - including Murray Melvin, Brian Murphy, Larry Dann. Ann Beach and Victor Spinetti - to each research an aspect of the war and the short agit-prop linking sketches sprung from that; she also wanted the show to be from the ordinary soldier's point of view and NO uniforms.   Some of the sketches now seem heavy-handed - one on industrialists comparing the fortunes made through munitions lasts forever - but the three productions I have seen all had fine moments, my first at the Roundhouse was the most consistent; the irony being it was a mobile production by the National Theatre - another thing that Littlewood loathed!  There was also a Northern Stage tour which interpolated other songs - Owen liked it when a song not heard for ages, "Cushy Butterfield", popped up - and a revival at Stratford East.  The heartbreaking juxtaposition of the songs - optimism turning to weariness in the face of resignation and death - against the moving scenes of the 1914 Christmas truce between the British and Germans, and the French army literally baa-ing their way, like lambs to slaughter, into machine gun fire, keep their theatrical power.

Here is a trailer for the 2015 tour that followed the Stratford East revival the year before: