"Two things stand out from contemporary reviews of Oh What a Lovely War . First, very few reviewers perceived the play as an objective representation of historical truth. This was not an unsophisticated audience: they came expecting performances that were left-wing, experimental and controversial. It is worth bearing in mind that, despite Theatre Workshop's aim of bringing theatre to the working class, much of its audience at Stratford consisted of regular theatregoers who were willing to travel out from the West End. A significant part of the audience for the play's first year of performance in both Stratford and Wyndham's Theatre on the Aldwych, where it transferred for the second half of its run, was middle-aged and middle class. Much though the programme notes might claim that: ‘everything spoken during this evening either happened or was said, sung or written during 1914-18', many in the audience were critical of what they were watching on historical grounds. The Guardian 's reviewer noted that Oh What a Lovely War was ‘as unfair as any powerful cartoon'. (16) The Times criticised the play for portraying:

The familiar view of the 1914-18 war as a criminally wasteful adventure in which the stoic courage of the common soldiers was equalled only by the sanctimonious incompetence of their commanders and the blind jingoism of the civilians. This approach is hardly likely to send audiences storming out of the theatre: the war is a sitting target for anyone who wants to deliver a bludgeoning social criticism without giving offence. (17)