Surprisingly Robin Kingsland's adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's controversial commentary on the sheer stupidity and brutality of war – premiered at Nottingham Playhouse less than three years ago – is the first dramatisation for the stage that the work has enjoyed.

Seen through the eyes of the young German student and butterfly enthusiast Paul Baumer (an exemplary performance by former EastEnders actor James Alexandrou) and his friends it has lost none of its initial impact.

How could it when we are still sending cannon fodder off to wars in foreign climes they know little about and understand less?

Like their British counterparts in The Accrington Pals these teenagers are encouraged to fight, romanticised like Gladiators, for a greater cause, for freedom, liberty and glory – then sacrificed as their commanders and country's politicians watch from the sidelines.

"War should be like a festival" says one optimist. "If we all had the same rations and the same pay the war would be over in a day," says a realist.

As the boys become men and the men become beasts and the beasts are herded into the slaughterhouse of nightmare battlefields little seems to have changed in the 90 years since their war ended and the 79 years since Remarque's novel was published.

First rate acting all round, an essential piece of theatre.

It continues until Saturday, November 14.

Robin Duke