ABSTRACT
Theatre Workshop’s Oh What a Lovely War (1963) was the last and greatest production of modernist British theatre. It was a show which used a barrage of modernist techniques to change the way the British viewed themselves and their history. After the war half a dozen members of the old group came together with as many newcomers to form Theatre Workshop on the old, left-wing principles: Theatre Workshop is an experimental theatre whose aim is to show to the widest public, and particularly to that section of the public which has been starved theatrically, plays of artistic significance. Joan Littlewood’s was the dominant personality as Theatre Workshop advanced. An excellent actress, she preferred having her own radical company to performing, and in any case she believed in collaborative creation, even if she was often the fastest in the group to find the solution to any problem, and her solutions were generally unquestioned.
