Customer Reviews

Bury The Dead.

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This play written in 1936 is an anti-war play. The genre was not popularly accepted at the time; more patriotic pieces were far more salable at box offices because of the growing threat from Europe. This play is a shining example of dramatic history and provides commentary on a society that was primarily pro-war. The language is easy to read, and the message is not sugar coated.

I highly recommend this play to anyone interested in war history.

After a read through of this play recently, I was left emotionally spent with a figerative bruise on my head from the lumping point Mr. Shaw made about the futility, irony, disgust and folly of war.
That's not to say I didn't appreciate this work. As a vision, Mr. Shaw presents gravedigging soldiers who toil in the doldrums of war and their heinous task, whose charges come to life and refuse to die. Which war is not clear, rather it is abstract: "The second year of the war that is to begin tomorrow night," leading to the allusion to any war, all wars. Still, the literary conceit is clear: the dead don't stay dead, the expendable are not expendable, and no machine or apparatus can justify the massacre of it's own. This last point is emphasized when the brass hear about these reanimated soldier's and pursue futile and egregious tactics to silence and "bury" them.
While poetic, harrowing, challenging and certainly relevent, Bury The Dead's message was clear as soon as they dead arose. And the thumping blow-the reminding of our current soldier's suffering as they are, and the ridiculousness of the situation compelled me to want it to end, so I could refocus myself on the true point and not be driven blind by the dry dated theatricality.

Don't expect that your audience will have a good time with this one. It will take first class direction to make it tolerable. It is a 1937 play based on circumstances that still held horrifying remembrances of World War I. It is anti war extreme emphasising the dreadful results of war: the young men whose lives were cut short and the loss felt by their loved ones. It is loaded with carictures of generals, priests and right wing media illustrative of the playwrite's liberal and unknowledgeable view of the military.