THE shadow of the Iraq war falls heavy across R C Sherriff's claustrophobic account of life in the First World War trenches.

Stalking both conflicts is a sense of the futility of war and the needless waste of lives in pursuit of an increasingly blurred cause.

In the shell-shocked aftermath of mass slaughter on the fields of France, Sherriff took fully ten years to turn his own experiences as an officer into Journey's End - and his was the first voice to try to make sense of it all.

The setting, superbly realised in Jonathan Fensom's dark and cramped design, is an officers' trench dug out, some 50 yards behind the front line at St Quentin in March, 1918, in the lead-up to the Germans' big attack.

Duck boards sink in the mud, puddles of water affirm the damp conditions, and so evocative is Sherriff's writing that your senses are alert to squeaking rats and the smell of candle grease and bacon, the fear of Stephen Hudson's neuralgic Hibbert and the constant whisky consumption of Tom Wisdom's stentorian Captain Dennis Stanhope.

Stanhope is a natural leader, captain of rugger at his public school, but promoted beyond his tender years.

At 21, he has been in charge for a year already; everyone who joined up with him at 18 at the front is now dead. Only the numbing whisky can see him through the day, as his sense of duty prevails over the corrosion of his heroic status in the nave eyes of latest arrival Raleigh (Richard Glaves), three years his junior at school.

Men cope in different ways: John Elmes's Osborne is a stoical and steadfast second-in-command; Roger Walker's Trotter jauntily badgers for better food; Stephen Casey's hangdog Private Mason is a precursor for Tony Robinson's Baldrick in Blackadder Goes Forth.

David Grindley's taut production, shot through with defiant humour, rises to a devastating finale. No collapsing set for him; instead the curtain falls amid deafening shell fire, and The Last Post rings out.

We shall not forget them, nor this magnificent production of a play that reminds us in our selfish age how collective responsibility and camaraderie have eroded away.

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Updated: 10:39 Tuesday, April 05, 2005