THE programme for this production of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop show says it is “as performed by the staff and clients of ‘The Happy Haven Home for the Elderly’” – a slightly odd framing device for this familiar collection of songs, sketches, speeches and scenes from the First World War, which seems to be director Paul King’s way of explaining the shortage of authentically young men in the cast when, as the archive photos displayed on a screen above the stage show, so many who fought and died were really just boys.

The well-known songs with their bawdy alternative lyrics are as vivid as always, and the enactment of a Christmas truce amidst the chaos does have some fragile success.

Sarah Mackinnon, one of many making their TFT début, takes on the role of General Haig, expressing complacent acceptance of so many wasteful deaths in a booming voice that is spookily reminiscent of Mrs Thatcher’s.