Aldwych Farces Vol. 1 [DVD]

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LESLIE SMITH Indeed, farce has a unique capacity for giving verbal and physical expression to our more anarchic imaginings or impUlses.

This was a great popular success, running for nearly two years, and they collaborated again, moving to the Aldwych Theatre. This particular release has been discontinued, however you may still be able to find second-hand copies.

It took Travers some time to establish a satisfactory working relationship with Walls, whom he found difficult as an actor-manager, and also distressingly unprepared as an actor. The following table shows the opening and closing dates, and the number of performances given, in the original productions of the Aldwych farces. The scripts incorporated and developed British low comedy styles, particularly "silly-asses, henpecked husbands, battleaxe mothers-in-law and lots of innocent misunderstandings. Lynn carries much of the comedy scenes, sneaking in and out to avoid the landlady, struggling to bed down on the floor, retrieving a dog in the rain, or rehearsing his excuses.

Bought to watch at Xmas -the best time to watch a farce -as the BBC broadcast a great version of 'Turkey Time' on radio about 25 years ago which I listen to every year and Robertson Hare was a legend. In his place is the superb comic character Gordon Harker, who brings his rough-edged posh cockney (“Oh yerrrrrrs”) to the table. If you are in Australia or New Zealand (DVD Region 4), note that almost all DVDs distributed in the UK by the BBC and 2entertain are encoded for both Region 2 and Region 4. Travers noted that the ad-libbing diminished as he came to anticipate and include in his scripts "the sort of thing Ralph himself would have said in the circumstances".The last of them, A Bit of a Test in 1933, ran for 142 performances, compared with runs of more than 400 performances for some of the earlier productions. A series of now-legendary stage comedies from the 1920s and '30s, the Aldwych Farces broke theatre box-office records and made the transition to celluloid with a run of hit films - making stars of Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn and Robertson Hare. Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. The films introduced the farces to cinema audiences and were produced by a number of film distributors including the British and Dominions Film Corporation, Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, and Gainsborough Pictures.

My discussion of these farces will focus on three in particular, Rookery Nook (1926), Thark (1927) and Plunder (1928), as representative of Travers’s work at its best and most characteristic, and on the three leading members of the company already referred to, who seemed especially to stimulate the dramatist’s inventive flair. The plays generally revolved around a series of preposterous incidents involving a misunderstanding, borrowed clothes and lost trousers, involving the worldly Walls character, the innocent yet cheeky Lynn, the hapless Hare, the beefy, domineering Brough, the lean, domineering Coleridge, and the pretty and slightly spicy Shotter, all played with earnest seriousness. Tom Walls directed the films, and has been accused of directing the actors in a stage play and then pointing the camera at them. centres around Ralph Lynn accidentally being forced to spend the night at a country inn with an old flame (Yvonne Arnaud) after they both miss their train, hire a car together and become stuck in the rain. Though only ten adaptations were made on film, the influence of these enduringly popular films was great and can be seen in some of the key British comedies from the first half of the 20th century.The Aldwych farces were a series of twelve stage farces presented at the Aldwych Theatre, London, nearly continuously from 1923 to 1933. Walls and Lynn would each make solo films as well, but their careers began to wind down in the late ’30s. A newlywed man gives shelter to a damsel in distress in his wife's absence, and has to head off scandal stirred up by his interfering sister-in-law. It’s a modern day Romeo and Juliet story in suburbia: neighbours, the pompous Walls and uptight Hare constantly do battle, while Ralph Lynn and Dorothy Hyson are their star-crossed offspring. In 1952, three years after Walls's death, Lynn and Hare starred at the Aldwych in a new Travers farce, Wild Horses.

The Aldwych farces also featured a regular team of supporting actors: Robertson Hare as a figure of put-upon respectability; Mary Brough in eccentric old lady roles; Ethel Coleridge as the severe voice of authority; the saturnine Gordon James as the "heavy"; and first Yvonne Arnaud, then Winifred Shotter, as the sprightly young female lead. As the sound era dawned, it was possible to create faithful screen adaptations of the farces, and ROOKERY NOOK (1930) ushered in a series that would be popular throughout the early and mid-thirties.The first in the Aldwych farce series was It Pays to Advertise, which ran for nearly 600 performances.