Oh! What a Lovely War

Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop play on the excesses and follies of war got misplaced in transition, and producer Len Deighton ended up removing his name from the credits. It remains an often too-clever, sometimes moving piece which never effectively reconciles its lampooning of the WWI General Staff (Haig playing leapfrog; conducting battles from a helter-skelter; losses reflected on cricket scoreboards) with its sincerity towards the salt-of-the-earth working class who were the ones who copped it. Lots of contemporary songs, scores of well-known faces.