On 19 March 1963, the musical Oh! What a Lovely War premiered at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London to great acclaim. Directed by British theatre director Joan Littlewood, the production was a biting satire about the First World War. Making extensive use of songs that were popular during 1914-18, the musical mixed comedic and tragic themes to make its 1960s audience reconsider what they thought they knew about the conflict.
The nightmarish horrors of the war had already been subjected to cultural critique during the conflict itself by soldier-poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The post-traumatic aftershocks were also depicted in the interwar period by playwrights such as RC Sherriff, who wrote the 1928 play Journey’s End based on his own experiences of fighting on the Western Front.
However, men like Owen, Sassoon and‘Tommy’ had largely been glossed over by popular culture. This changed in the 1960s with revisionist histories of the war that heavily criticised the British high command.
