NEWS RELEASE
Audio theater recording of riveting World War I drama
‘Journey’s End’ now available from L.A. Theatre Works
LOS ANGELES (May 22, 2024) — The newest audio theater recording from L.A. Theatre Works is a powerful rendition of Journey’s End, the groundbreaking 1928 World War I drama by R.C. Sherriff. Adapted and directed by Martin Jarvis OBE and featuring an all-British cast of distinguished actors, Journey’s End is now available for digital download for $4.99 at latw.org.
Set in 1918 near the end of the war, Journey’s End charts the overpowering tension and claustrophobia in the British trenches over the course of four days, as a group of officers await an expected German attack. Based on Sherriff’s personal experience, the play is considered to be one of the best examples in modern dramatic literature of the true horror and tragedy of war.
“R.C. Sherriff was one of Britain’s great playwrights, and Journey’s End is one of the greatest war plays,” says Jarvis. “It may be set during World War I, but it’s clearly about the experience of war for all time, any time. About a group of soldiers in a horrific situation and how they deal with it, revealing every aspect of human nature including fear, huge courage, crippling cowardice, heroism and, maybe most important, humor. The play is surprisingly funny. The characters are British, but they could be Ukrainian, Palestinian, Israeli. It’s universal.”
Jack Cutmore–Scott stars as the young Captain Stanhope, doing his best to hold it together for his men. When the even younger Lieutenant Raleigh (Josh Cole), a former childhood friend of Stanhope’s, joins the company, he finds the older boy he used to worship changed almost beyond recognition. Also in the cast are James Callis, Tobias Echeverria, Adam Godley, Ian Ogilvy, Darren Richardson, Simon Templeman and Matthew Wolf.
When the play premiered at London’s Apollo Theatre in 1928, it starred a very young Laurence Olivier as Stanhope. In 2017, it was adapted into a film starring Sam Claflin.
L.A. Theatre Works stands apart in its approach to making great theater widely accessible and affordable, bringing audio recordings of plays into homes and classrooms of millions of theater lovers, teachers and students each year. The company’s syndicated audio theater series broadcasts weekly on public radio stations across the U.S. (locally, in Southern California, on KPFK 90.7 FM); can be downloaded as a podcast via Apple Podcasts, NPR One, or wherever you get your podcasts; and can be streamed on demand at latw.org. The L.A. Theatre Works catalog of nearly 600 recorded plays is the largest archive of its kind in the world. AudioFile magazine calls L.A. Theatre Works productions “the gold standard for fine audio theater recordings.”
To download a digital copy of Journey’s End, go to latw.org.
