Oh What A Lovely War
SAMPLE PAGES
PRELIMINARY WORK
Please note first of all that this resource is not a manual for a production of the play. I have not been allowed the copyright of any of the songs. Obviously, since this is a show reliant on the music of the time, which both sets the mood and occasionally tells parts of the story, you will need copies of the music yourselves. To put on the show, you have to get in touch with the licensees, Samuel French, who will release the music and will put you in touch with a third party, Carole Lomax, who will release the slides to be projected on the screen. None of these things have I been allowed to have or reproduce.
Since most of you are studying the play as a set text, you will not necessarily be mounting a full scale production. Instead you will be discussing and discovering all that would be needed to do so. I had a long talk with the man in charge of licensing the show at Samuel French. He told me that the music which comes with the license is woefully inadequate, written by hand and without any of the words attached. It is sketchy at best. He suggests that getting hold of copies of the songs would be best. Most of these are in a book called Oh It's A Lovely War [a confusingly different yet similar title.] Which of course is out of print! However, I have looked on abebooks. co.uk and on amazon and there are some copies out there.
Otherwise, ransack your local library, and make up a collection of the songs from a variety of books, that way. The back of the text has a list of all the songs and their writers and composers. Then ask the music teacher at the school to put the music onto a CD for use in class. Personally, if I were teaching this text I would want students to be able to learn the tunes and I am only sorry that I can't help in this way.
It's possible you might be able to download the songs onto an ipod. I haven't researched that option.
If you want to have all the copyright details of all the music used, then I strongly advise you to get the Methuen Student edition, which has a very full list at the back . It includes all the incidental bits and pieces mentioned too. The Richard Attenborough film is easy and cheap to get from Amazon. It is helpful for some of these tunes, but not for much else. It bears very little resemblance to the play and is too polished in its presentation, lacking the raw edge of the original intention. It is however worth watching particularly for the stunning image of the ending, which is in my opinion the best thing about it - truly haunting. And it's fun to spot all those famous faces of the late sixties acting scene.
Ransack the library too for pictures and stories about the War. The students should be immersed in the whole thing, as the original actors were - personal details and political ones. This needs to be the preliminary work undertaken, before starting on the text. Have a number of sessions in which students report back with the information they have found and in which ideas are pooled.
I would suggest that they also have experience of the way in which the original production was done. They will discover stories of their own if they have adequate time to research and facts other than those in the text. It would be helpful to them to devise at least one scene of their own round what they have found. Divide the class up into groups of about six or seven to do this.
Have them try their scenes in two different styles. The first one that I am sure they will come up with is an attempt at a naturalistic scene.
After they have presented this, ask them to undercut the same scene with announcements like newspaper 'read all about it' headlines. This can be done by a character standing outside the scene. The announcements could be purely descriptive of what is happening, e.g. 'Thousands die in No Man's Land in the biggest offensive yet.' Or they can be blatantly contradicting the action shown, e.g. 'Massive Victory over the Enemy. Casualties Few.'
Try as an alternative not having someone outside the action speaking the headlines, but characters within the scene - even if dead - getting up and saying them.
Discuss fully the different reactions their audience of the rest of the group had to the approaches above. Which did they find most effective?
This will go a long way to helping understand how the style of the play is built up. It is often multi-layered, using contrasting and often contradictory means to send provocative messages to the audience. Before starting on the text, I think it is imperative that the students understand the way in which the material was approached. Littlewood all her life never felt that texts were sacred. To cope with this examination, neither should the students. The play need not be done in exactly the same way as the original was. That would be to set the thing in stone and that would be far from Littlewood's intentions. The way this text should be studied is firstly to understand and try out as far as possible the way in which it was done by Theatre Workshop and secondly to suggest and try out for themselves creative and viable alternatives where appropriate, especially to the production and design methods.
WORKING THROUGH THE TEXT IN A PRACTICAL WAY
From the beginning the exercises assume a knowledge of the play and what happens in it. It is important, therefore, that before you start the following work you will have read the play. At the very least, you should have read the notes on playing style that precede this section.
I try never to be dictatorial in the practical work. There is no version that is more right or more wrong than another. What the following work hopes to encourage is the habit of experiment. Too often, when you read a line it is the first meaning that becomes fixed in the mind. Often this could be just the most obvious and other subtler interpretations might add more meaning to the episode.
It is important that you also get in the habit of recording the results of all the work you do.
Do not be insulted, all you girls, by the use of ''he' as a pronoun in many exercises. I am using it for ease largely - it's so long-winded to say 'he/she' always - and nowadays, in any case, the word 'actor' refers to both the male and female of the species! In this play, in particular, girls can take on male roles if necessary.
ACT ONE
SETTING THE SCENE
Every effort should be made to conjure up the feeling of a lazy summer's day. The opening needs to set both the idea of a pierrot show and the context of a hot Edwardian summer, where war is far from anyone's mind. The actuality of the war will be starker in contrast then.
Consider gentling the audience into the mood by creating a set that includes the auditorium. A plain bare stage, outlined by bunting and fairy-lights. This to surround the audience seating too. Union Jacks hung around. One or two 'stalls' selling ice cream cornets, hot dogs. The audience could be encouraged, like for an old time music-hall evening, to dress in period for the occasion. Cast dressed as pierrots could show people to their seats, inviting people to participate in side-shows on the way. There could be a period 'saucy post-card style' lifesize figure on the way in, with cut-out face, for people to stand behind and show their own face in the gap. Someone could hand out little union-jacks on sticks.... or sell them and so on. Programmes could be in the shape of flags, or pierrot hats.... A live band could play the audience in, before breaking into the tunes which make up the overture. Try your best to think of ways of reinforcing the idea of a pierrot show on a seaside pier. Perhaps you could go for an outdoor production. Or, given the summer weather at present, a circus-type tent as a location. This option is at least easier for electrical equipment - slide projectors and lights. If you want to tie in these ideas to a particular practitioner, then Craig springs to mind, who liked to see a show as a unified design which includes the auditorium.
The screen for projections, or the entire back wall / cyclorama should be plain white. Littlewood was adamant that the projections should be the visible background to the action at all times. She said, rightly, that if the projections are not a part of the staging, the audience is divided as to where to look. She wanted the pull, sometimes the deliberate contradiction, between what is happening on stage and what the slides are showing or the Newspanel is displaying.
It could be that you have the wherewithal to display a moving relay of news headings. Or, if you like, you could make up slides of the words themselves, perhaps in the form of newspaper headings with sections of the story accompanying them below. The stories might be illegible - it doesn't matter, so long as the headings are there.
The opening Newspanel shows items associated with that English summer just before the War: a hot Bank Holiday [!]; a boxing match where one opponent kicked the other when he was down; Sir Thomas Beecham, founder of the Proms, working on an opera. Is there any other way of emphasising these things other than just the announcements? Try the following to fuel ideas and discussion:
The company come on during the music of I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside. They take up positions on the stage reminiscent of a hot day on the beach: some play beach games; some lay out a rug and a picnic; some paddle, build castles, and so on. No props. All done in larger than life, clear mime. Think of the style of the saucy postcard - make facial expressions and body language as large as that. Thus, big silent 'squeals' as a toe encounters the cold water; large clear-cut 'concrete' mime to indicate building a sand-castle or opening a picnic hamper. No small or woolly vague movements. For a production, might you want to choreograph this with the music? Or would you want it to be more natural, the music just as a background?
As suggested by the script, the company drift on and take places around the stage. They sit or stand in natural looking groupings, smiling and waving at individual members of the audience. You could extend this, by having people coming onto the stage from all over the auditorium. Some of these may be the ushers, or those who minded the stalls, if you are using that idea.
The company take places all over the stage - as for idea a] or idea b]. They freeze. One of them announces 'Summer 1914.' Another announces 'Scorching Bank Holiday Forecast'. The company unfreeze in a slick, all together movement into another pose, showing the heat of the day - the seaside - etc. They freeze again. Another person announces 'Gunboat Smith Fouls Carpentier in Sixth Round'. The company turn to watch two people miming a dirty boxing blow [slow motion please] - into freeze. The Thomas Beecham announcement could have someone conducting the band, the rest politely clapping and moving their faces and bodies into upper-class expressions. Then freeze once more.
The above are just some suggestions. You can of course just stick to the Newspanel and the script suggestion - which is the second option above.
Discuss where you would want the band. It is a small band of five. It could be on the stage itself, perhaps to one of the sides. Or it could be in front of the stage platform - bearing in mind that this will put the stage itself at one remove from the audience. Perhaps you would want the band somewhere in the auditorium itself - at the back or to the side. It would depend on your venue, I think. Having them somewhere here may make the audience feel more part of the whole thing. And the band could be one of the side-show events, perhaps on a circular platform, taking place as if on the pier when the audience first arrive.
The set itself is no more than the screen, the newspanel and a bare stage with fairy-lights. The original stage had a balcony also on each side of the stage. Other than that, any levels, seats, ramparts and so on are made of circus-style wooden circular blocks, which are brought on or put into positions as necessary. From now on I shall call these blocks, as she did, 'tubs.' The style is 'poor theatre', as Grotowski would have called it. The script indicates that the same things are used over and over, to represent different objects or props.
I think it is worth considering that two screens are used, angled perhaps towards the back. Slide projections could be on these - perhaps even in duplicate, that is the same image replicated on both sides. Or one screen could show the news items, the other the image. This would free up the back wall or cyclorama for other things. An example would be to have a wash of red, spilling over the back after great loss of life. Shadows thrown up large. The sky, or clouds. Fields of poppies. Whatever. I'll discuss this further when there are specific contexts later to warrant such an idea.
The use of side screens would make the placing of balconies difficult. However, a wheeled balcony, to give height, rather similar to a library stepladder in design, with a little platform on top and rail at the front, might do just as well. Something to consider. This idea would have the advantage of being moveable, so only brought on when necessary.
The M.C. enters, wearing a mortar-board. This in Brechtian 'gestic' terms immediately suggests a teacher and that therefore we are going to be instructed. It is a useful shorthand way of preparing us for lessons.
Once again, the script suggests an easy camaraderie between audience and MC. - in other words, not like a teacher at all. Try the difference.The M.C. enters:
strictly, glaring around him and frowning at particular members of the audience
the same, only jokingly, like a clown-teacher
his body-language is that of an older person, someone who is an authority on his subject. He is friendly and smiles around the audience. He might even ad lib a little, but as this character
though he wears a mortar-board, he is jokey and jolly. He takes the mortar-board off, taps it in a puzzled way - asks which way round it should be worn from someone - and so on. This suggests that this is an actor pretending to be a teacher - an impression intensified by the pierrot costume covering the rest of him.
Play around with mixes and matches of the above. It may be you want to change from, say, the jokey or clown-type teacher, to a serious mood before the announcement that the show is about to begin. This could even be a way of gathering the cast into their new positions for Row Row Row.
Littlewood did not want any kind of slick choreography such as is usual for musical theatre. Bearing this in mind, see if you can come up with a movement choreography based on mime rather than dance. The majority of the cast could be divided up in the following ways:
some sitting on individual 'tubs' either miming that they are rowing or using short bamboo canes as oars
two holding the blue cloth between them.
two as Johnny and his girl [who joins hm later] sitting on two tubs in front of the blue cloth, facing the audience. Johnny mimes rowing.
A more improvisatory and mime feel is retained if other incidents are built in, such as someone punting, as suggested by the script, divers, and swimmers.
You could have a cluster of girls on the 'bank' [ a cluster of tubs behind the blue cloth] with Flo as one of them. They all wave and blow kisses at Johnny rowing. Flo is pushed forward by the others and enters the 'boat' cautiously. She sits beside Johnny on the other tub. From then on 'Johnny' doesn't row, but sets about 'spooning' - that is hugging and kissing.
Whilst this is going on, the other rowers do the rowing in time to the 'row, row, row's of the chorus.
Try to make a comic sequence of Johnny's advances, which can happen twice, the second time ending up on the floor with one of Flo's legs in the air, Johnny on hands and knees over her.
The final part of the chorus clearly has everyone picking up their props, standing and facing the audience and bowing.
Try it out adding touches as you go. For instance, the 'oh,oh,oh's' could involve the chorus putting their shocked hands to the mouths, or some such.
Make sure they leave the stage in a chorus type way - waving as they run off, for instance.
Would you have the pierrot's going right off stage, or could part of the staging be benches, or the tubs, lining each side of the stage with costumes and props kept there too? In a Brechtian manner, the pierrots could change visibly. Discuss this as a possibility. As you work through the play, I think it'll become clearer to you whether this idea would work or not. Either way, the shout of 'No!' from offstage suggests the company aren't far away - perhaps a compromise is to have them semi-visible, i.e. to certain sections of the audience, behind the screens.
You might want another sort of compromise: the cast going right off at this point, ready for the big procession to come, but in future not off - or not always. You might want some scenes 'pure' and some watched by the other pierrots. Bear this in mind as a discussion point throughout. Cast observing from the sides can add to the intensity because their focus of attention adds electricity to the scene they are witnessing. It also gives an improvisatory feel. But you may decide that it is distracting to an audience - which it will only be if there's too much changing and getting ready.
A good M.C. is lke a stand-up comedian. It is not easy. For a trial, have each member of the group learn a joke of their choice and deliver it to an audience of the rest of the group. It doesn't matter if the joke isn't funny. It's all in the delivery. The M.C. [ no reason why this shouldn't be a girl] has to make eye contact with different sections of his audience; be prepared to pick up on and answer heckling or comments from the audience; keep his voice loud and commanding but also friendly and warm. He must attract an audience, in the sense that it is he who sets the tone for the show and draws the audience attention in. He prepares the ground.
You could use the jokes as written, if you like. Anyone who cannot find a good joke to tell could just learn these ones. They are clearly chosen for the German reference and the Generals. Discuss whether these jokes are necessary or whether any of your own would do to soften the audience up. How necessary is it to keep topical to the period, even in the jokes? Are there some jokes that the group have brought that are really not suitable at all? Do any of you know any war jokes that would be acceptable? For instance, do you think a joke about a modern war or crisis would work? Something about President Bush and Tony Blair and Iraq, for instance?
Discuss this carefully. With Brechtian theatre, anachronisms are often deliberate. They help widen the sphere of the piece being shown. For instance, in Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children there are references to twentieth century wars and weapons that are distinctly modern, though the play is set in the European Thirty Years' War, which took place mainly in the seventeenth century. The idea is such mixed references will enable the audience to see an antiwar message as not just applicable to one war but to all war. In political theatre in general, the same practices hold good. Steven Berkoff does much the same thing as Brecht in his play Agamemnon. Though the setting is ancient Greece and the war is the Trojan War, the soldiers are described, and are shown, with machine-guns, flame-throwers, tanks and the like. The subject being portrayed then becomes all wars and the message, which in this case too is anti-war, is applicable to any war in any generation.
In this case, the ground the M.C. is preparing the audience for is the War Game. The jokes could maybe be more pointed than the ones given here but the tone must remain light all the same. This might begin to change as he announces 'the ever-popular War Game!' Because there is something fairly sinister about the title, there are different ways you could present it. Try from 'Milords, ladies and gentlemen...':
like a circus ring-master, making it sound dazzling and exciting, on an upward note
with a dark drum-roll - on a bass drum - which will make the announcement tenser, behind the words. The sentence delivered more seriously
with a strongly ironic emphasis and accompanying slightly sinister look
Which do you think works best?
SECOND SAMPLE FROM:
TYING UP THE THREADS - FURTHER WORK ON THE PLAY
Look back at the notes you have made throughout and make some decisions now. Things that need deciding are:
1.] Whether you are going to have the facts up on a Newspanel or given by a live Announcer. Another possibility is to have the factual side of the play presented either by the M.C. as jokey teacher or by improvised scenes.These might especially work as additional scenes to give, for instance, facts about trenches to a bunch of tourists, visitors to a battlefield, who ask questions and find out about a number of key moments.
Try the possibility of this as an improvisation now. Gathering up all the facts you know about how trenches were made, in groups of four to six, allocate tourist characters such as the gossipy old Granny, the old soldier of the Second World War who thinks he knows it all, the student who is studying the First World War at school, the mother with revolting little child - and so on. Of course, there needs to be the Guide too, who demonstrates or relates the facts and answers questions. This, even if you don't adopt the idea, will show that facts can be dealt with humorously.
Other factual bits of background that might work in this way are: the situation before the war started; the in-fighting between Generals; an introduction to Haig; the battle of the Somme; the French Mutiny.
2.] The placing of the cast - on or off stage. Or on at times and off at times. Whether they should keep props and costumes visible, change in front of the audience, and so on.
3.] The number and placing of the screens. Go right through the script debating what would be on the screen/ or screens at all times. Consider the idea of having a screen or screens for slides/ facts and a back screen or cyclorama for atmosphere setters. There could be a neutral colour at times for this latter idea, such as a colour wash made by light, which can also alter during a scene - deepening in colour or altering from say blue to red. Since the play often works through the use of contrast - a fact, for instance, contradicting the event on stage - this gives an added ability to do this. Behind the Irish scene, for instance, the back cyclorama could display the picture of a bare branch with a bird singing on it. Or the view of the sun which brightens unbearably as the soldiers die. Pretty pictures of fireworks could show behind the news of a victory - looks lovely but also reminiscent of bombardments over No Man's Land.
4.] The use of the M.C. This character is very prominent at the beginning and in certain scenes [though occasionally I myself have suggested that certain things like the Plant Pot is taken by the M.C.] At other times in the text, though, he is not mentioned. Would you want him on stage all the time somewhere? If so, decisions need to be made for every scene. Could he occasionally take part, occasionally watch from the side-lines. Consider when he is useful as a link to the audience and what sort of a link this should be. Should he be the outsider always? Should he lead the audience as to how to respond - by facial expression or whatever? I suspect he has different roles in different scenes. Go through the whole play, and the notes you have made, clarifying his position in each.
5.] Lighting - to be used purely practically, as Brecht might, simply to light the scene and often the auditorium too - or to be used for mood and atmosphere. Which scenes would benefit from which approach? Discuss and decide.
6.] Sound effects to be used likewise - as part of the scene or terrifyingly exaggerated in an Artaudian way.
If you are not doing a complete production, I suggest you make up pieces of card to hold up in practical work for all the Newspanel entries. This will help those facts sink in. Find a way even on the cards to make the weight of numbers stand-out and the lack of gain from each battle.
Consider promenading as a possible way of presenting this play. This means that you have various scenes already set up at different parts of the hall, or different venues outside. The audience is led from one venue to another, by following the cast singing, or a clowning pierrot figure who beckons them to come, or they follow the band from place to place, or the M.C. courteously invites them to follow him. Discuss it as a possibility; what are the advantages and disadvantages? Make a decision as to the type of staging and set-up you would want for the play.
Audience involvement is important in political theatre productions. The M.C. is a direct link with them of course and other characters can also use direct address to them. I have built in throughout ideas that involve characters exiting or entering through the audience and scenes that partly take place at the back of or in the auditorium. Look at other possibilities too. Maybe I have missed some opportunities.
Make a list of the props and moveable set additions that you will need, and think about how they would be made. An example is the streetvendor's cart. Another is the balconies - would you want them built into your set or wheeled on as I have suggested - if indeed you want them used at all. Building of trenches and other props also need thought. There have been ideas about this in the relevant scenes.
A big decision you will need to make is how far you keep up the idea of 'poor theatre' - the use of simple props to represent a number of things. An example is the umbrellas or walking sticks that become guns. Would you want to keep this up throughout, or would you want that to gradually change? This links with the idea of costume, too. I wonder if it would be effective to have props and costuming gradually becoming more realistic as the play progresses. This would mean that representative army caps for the beginning on top of the pierrot costumes, give way gradually to more and more complete uniforms - and weapons. Umbrellas become by a certain point in Act Two, guns with bayonets; pierrots gradually shed shirts for army jackets, clown trousers for soldiers trousers. The idea is nice, I think - but you will need to work out how practical it is according to cast numbers. Go through the play working out which scenes you would definitely want the cast to be pierrots in and see if that makes you see the practicalities more clearly. Perhaps you would want the pierrots to start shedding their uniform too, just as they added bits gradually through the first half - so that they re-emerge as pierrots again at the end.
There is a lot to think about here and it needs careful discussion of the metaphor of the pierrot. I discussed this towards the end of the last section, too. Accurate costuming in First World War gear would be difficult and expensive perhaps. Are there other basic costumings one could use - such as all in black, for instance? Would this not say enough though? Perhaps there are other metaphorical ideas one could use, such as having some people in a scene where all die, in black trousers and long-sleeved tops, with skeleton outlines on them, underneath the pierrot costume to be shed, for instance?
Bear in mind that a costume that they all wear is important for three reasons: it is a leveller, making the whole cast feel like an ensemble and levelling officers and men; it is practical, saving the expense and difficulty of finding complete soldier and officer costumes - important when each member of the cast may take several roles; it is 'saying something' metaphorically- clowns, fools, put-upon Everymen, etc. It may be that you like this idea but find the pierrot costumes too out-dated. Could another more modern picture of a clown be just as effective?
Throughout, I have hinted at other ways of presenting a scene which are far more extreme or grotesque. Consider these options now. If you liked them and thought they might work - examples were the recruiting giant-sized lady who swallows the recruits in her skirts; the grotesques of the profiteers; the white tissue paper sheets falling slowly and gracefully of the casualty lists, etc. - then see if there are others you can add.
Here are some other suggestions to start you off:
Haig mounted on a huge structure of a horse, like a horse skeleton, pushed on by soldiers
the whole set being suggestive of bones or a mountain of skeletons - the screens being built into this structure. Lighting being used to suggest the skeleton at times
you could take the profiteers scene even farther than I have already suggested: as the grouse start to fall, red tissue paper balls or poppies could fall from the flies, so many of them that the shooters look as though they are wading through a sea of them; the picnic hamper could be opened to reveal recognisable body parts; as they guzzle their way through things, their mouths could become streaked with red.
billowing clouds of black lining material - large enough to cover the whole stage - to engulf the soldiers at times, e.g. after a gas attack
Consider too the film idea of having a recognisable character throughout - identified by costume and a poppy perhaps? - who is then the one who we see at the end following the red ribbon. See my suggestions over different endings. Discuss this. Does it help to have a character for an audience to empathise with , as I have suggested - a kind of Everyman, not a character who is fully rounded as Stanislavski would want? Or does this spoil the judgemental stance of political theatre? What effect do you as Director really want to make with this play? Make sure that you are absolutely clear on this. This is important - probably the most important decision. On your decision will hang all the other decisions with which you have been experimenting.
Remember to remain experimental and playful. Littlewood was no respecter of texts. She wouldn't want this one either to be set in stone. Use this as a justification for improvisational additions, if you want them, and other ideas.
