Carry on sarge

THE trench war 1914-18 adventures portrayed in Journey's End at Darlington's Civic Theatre next week hasn't tempted well-known star Philip Franks to discover if any of his own family fought in the conflict.

"The research I did was more into the writer R C Sherriff's world because the play is, to a large extent, a self portrait. He wrote a very interesting autobiography called No Leading Lady which is about Journey's End and his life in Hollywood after that. He seems to exemplify a lot of the qualities that my character Osborne has in terms of quietness of spirit," he explains.

He regards Journey's End as one of the easiest plays to find background for because so much wonderful material has been written about this "war to end all wars".

"But I felt that introducing something completely personal to my character might get in the way," explains Franks who plays a war-weary sergeant in the final days of the conflict trying to hold together a band of new recruits led by a young officer who has seen too much death and destruction.

But there is wartime service close to home for him. He explains: "My dad was in the RAF during the Second World War and he never talked about it at all. He carried on as a career RAF officer until I was about seven but he never one for wartime anecdotes so I learned to steer away from it. I think he was a very modest man and disapproved very strongly of people boasting."

Many people will feel they know Franks quite well having achieved primetime fame as Charley in The Darling Buds Of May and pompous Sgt Raymond Craddock in Heartbeat. But on the subject of allowing the cameras to film warts and all personal details he says: "The whole reality TV thing and the rootling around in people's privacy seems to me to be repellent, having said that I'll probably be in Celebrity Big Brother next year although, at the moment, wild horses on their bended knee wouldn't get me in that."

Franks admits that Journey's End couldn't have been written straight after the war - Sheriff released the work in 1928 at the same time as the book All Quiet On The Western Front - because the pressure of doing nothing to damage the reputation of the nation's glorious dead was far too great at that time.

"It's not a play like Oh What A Lovely War saying that all war is futile and stupid but it does say 'look at these men living in hell'. I think it's come into focus now in a way it wouldn't have done ten or 15 years ago because we are as a nation very concerned about the idea of war. The production doesn't caper around saying 'think of Iraq' but you'd have to be pretty dense not to sit there and do some thinking yourself.

"The idea of young men sent to horrible unfamiliar terrains to fight for causes that are debatable is right in the forefront of our thinking at the moment."

Franks feels it is vital to remember these wartime experiences in a spirit of questioning rather than set them in "glorious aspic".

"How a man who's been a teacher all of his life and whose pursuits are gentle and academic has to function under pressure is not a massive leap for the imagination," he explains about tackling his own character in the play.

"But you don't have to have killed a king to play Macbeth," he explains.

Franks, who also played the role in the West End, is fascinated by a character portrayed as everyone's favourite uncle. "But what is he like when he's by himself? What does the Samaritan do when he puts the phone down, that's the really interesting area, and where his own demons are put?"

The actor moved into directing in the 1990s and confesses his hand is a little creaky having spent such a long period appearing in Journey's End. He's looking to move back into the director's chair during the summer for a production of The Tempest at Liverpool's Playhouse where there are high hopes that Corin Redgrave will agree to play Prospero.

"Something has suddenly happened to Corin in the last five years and from being very good he's gone through a doorway into doing amazing work. I wish he'd give me the address," says Franks who recently saw Redgrave playing Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company. "This job has taken the best part of a year and, indeed, very much like the First World War they told me it would be all over by Christmas," jests Franks who is also anxious to do some more work on television when he stands down from wartime duty in March.

"But first I do want to get back in the saddle as a director," says the actor who has gained respect for this art and knows the feeling of "please let it be coffee break because I don't know what to say" when everything is going wrong in rehearsal.

Franks has also enjoyed touring probably more than the West End run - where a lot of the audience are holidaymakers attending as part of a London package - because provincial audiences are brighter and hungrier.

That is everywhere except Jersey.

"Jersey seems to have no desire to go to the theatre at all. I don't know what they bloody want. We went there with the comedy Noises Off, two-and-a-half hours of uproarious laughter about absolutely nothing, and with this, which is two hours of searing drama about absolutely everything, and they loathed them both."

* Journey's End runs at Darlington's Civic Theatre from Monday until Saturday. Box Office: (01325) 486555.

Published: 27/01/2005