Using music hall songs, comedy and soldiers’ songs from the era, it leaves an audience emotionally drained, shocked and angry.

Just how could General Haig send wave after wave of men over the top into machine gun fire? How could Germany launch mustard gas? How could so many leaders be so thick?

The originator, radical producer Joan Littlewood, put her heart and soul into the Stratford East production back in the sixties and were she living, she would have approved of this slick, technically superior play at The Rep

It is a fast, sharp production with an able cast melding humour, wit, bathos and physical theatre to show the kaleidoscopic nightmare of war, both at the front and back in Britain.

Everyone, it seems, from George Bernard Shaw, to Kaiser Bill to the forgotten troops are portrayed. And a very modern scrolling digi-board gives you a brutal diary of events and casualty figures (alarming even today) to frame the progress of the carnage.

What comes through is the black humour and fatalistic bravery of the troops caked in blood and mud as four years of madness took its toll.

Sadly, the Rep’s big auditorium swallows some of the banter, the lyrics and quick fire jokes. It is a pity that so much professionalism goes into the play but some is simply lost with mediocre acoustics.