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World War One, a hundred years on, entrenched on London stages

(Reuters) - The centenary year of the start of World War One is being marked on the London stage as a bloodbath that wasted millions of lives and ended in failure, setting the world on the destructive path for World War Two.

With "War Horse" - the internationally hailed play about a British army steed in the Great War - still playing in the West End, theatre-goers can now delve deeper into the human side of the conflict that killed some 10 million military personnel.

A slick and spirited revival of Joan Littlewood's dark-humored 1963 anti-war musical "Oh What a Lovely War" is on at the Theatre Royal in the east London borough of Stratford, where it created waves 50 years ago.

Playwright Peter Gill's "Versailles" dealing with the peace treaty that ended the 1914-18 war - but which in Gill's and many historians' view set the world on the road to the next one - opened last week at the bijou Donmar Warehouse venue....

Read entire article at Reuters