Triumphantly received in the West End, on Broadway and across Britain since its first performances in 2004, David Grindley’s superb revival of R.C. Sherriff’s 1929 box office smash Journey’s End is once more out on tour and playing this week at Milton Keynes Theatre. No one should miss the chance to see this affecting production of a play which, more than any other, captures the horror — and, strange as it may seem, the humour — of life in the trenches during the First World War.

Explosions of ordnance and the rat-tat-tat of small arms fire punctuate the action. What Wilfred Owen compellingly described as “the monstrous anger of the guns” — unsparingly supplied by sound designer Gregory Clarke — is often reflected in the explosive fury of some of those trapped in the rat-ridden tunnels within their range. The verbal roastings delivered by the whisky-sodden Captain Stanhope (Nick Hendrix, right) are painful to watch and hear — those especially directed at the windy upper-crust 2nd Lieutenant Hibbert (Simon Harrison), who is feigning illness in a bid for home, and the new recruit 2nd Lieutenant Raleigh (Graham Butler).

This plucky, likable lad has been at school with his superior, idolising him as a sporting star. Will he see how his hero has crumbled amid the horrors of war? More importantly, will he report home on this in letters that might be read by his sister, with whom Stanhope has clearly been in love?

But this is also a play that famously celebrates some of the nobler aspects of military life, including comradely regard for one’s fellow fighting men. Nowhere is this better seen than in the character of Lieutenant Osborne, known to all as ‘Uncle’. A schoolmaster by profession, he is ideally placed to bring comfort to colleagues who have come so lately from school.

The aforementioned humour arises chiefly from the culinary horrors (among them onion-flavoured tea) arriving from the kitchen of Private Mason (Tony Turner) and the gleeful reception of these by the gluttonous, downmarket 2nd Lieutenant Trotter (Christian Patterson).

Journey’s End is at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday (0844 8717652, www.ambassadortickets.com/miltonkeynes) and can be seen at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, from October 11 to 15 (01242 572573, www.everymantheatre.org.uk).