Aldwych Farces Vol. 1 [DVD]

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Private Lives (Preview 18 September, opened 19 September 1990 – 26 January 1991) starring Joan Collins, Keith Baxter. Limited season, extended. The following day, Harold turns up to hear Clive's explanation. Unknown to the men, Mrs Leverett and Gertrude Twine also arrive; they see Rhoda coming out of Gerald's bedroom and are in haste to tell Clara about it. Clive and Gerald bully Harold into going to fetch some clothes for Rhoda so that she can leave the house and escape to London to stay with friends. While Harold is away on this errand, a further intruder, Admiral Juddy, arrives at Rookery Nook demanding to know why Harold has failed to turn up as agreed for a round of golf.

The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Aldwych in the City of Westminster, central London. It was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. [1] Its seating capacity is 1,200 on three levels. [2] History [ edit ] Origins [ edit ] Local and District News", Western Gazette, 15 August 1930, pp. 4–5; and "Aldwych Farce at the Repertory", Western Morning News, 13 May 1933, p. 5 After the failure of Chastity, my Brother, Travers returned to comedy, though not immediately to farce. Later in 1936 his O Mistress Mine was a light Ruritanian vehicle for Yvonne Printemps. [38] He returned to farce with Banana Ridge (1938) in which Robertson Hare starred with Alfred Drayton. [39] It was set in Malaya, and turned on which of two middle-aged pillars of Empire was the father of the young hero. Travers himself played the part of Wun, a servant; his lines in colloquial Malay, remembered from his Malacca days, were improvised and sometimes took his colleagues by surprise. The play ran for 291 performances, bettering the runs of the last six Aldwych farces. [40] Second World War and postwar [ edit ] I think that real sense of danger is part of what the audience enjoys," says Foley. "In a way, farce is the most purely theatrical form. There's a visceral, palpable sense that this thing is happening live in front of you. And when the wardrobe falls on someone's head or someone stubs their toe – and maybe they really are stubbing their toe, night after night – it's exciting for an audience. That's why it feels so live and dangerous."Programme for Colchester Repertory Company's production of 'Rookery Nook' by Ben Travers", Essex Record Office; and "Playhouse People", Oxford Playhouse; all accessed 3 March 2013 Richards, Jeffrey (2001). "Crisis at Christmas". In Mark Connelly (ed.). Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British and European Cinema. London: Tauris. ISBN 1860643973. Fast forward a few years and the Whitehall Theatre was struggling to find a programme that could capture the public’s attention. It had been home to Phyllis Dixey, London's first ever theatre stripper but Phyllis and her Whitehall Follies left in 1947. The cancellation of a failed play a little while later then created an opening for young actor Brian Rix to step in, leasing the venue for his new production company. Seeking a lively play that captured a ready audience, Rix found Reluctant Heroes. It was a new farce by Colin Morris about an army drill sergeant struggling to control his troops. It proved a canny choice and, like Dad's Army on TV later on, the play’s sense of shared wartime experience suggested it could speak to millions. The play ran at the Whitehall for more than 1,600 performances until 1954. The two Aldwych farces not filmed by members of the company were It Pays to Advertise and A Bit of a Test. The first of these plays was an updated and Anglicised adaptation of an American play of 1914; a version of the original play was filmed in the US in 1931, starring Norman Foster, Carole Lombard, and Richard "Skeets" Gallagher. Due to the war and the death of his wife, Ben had a fallow period, although he collaborated on a few revivals and adaptations of his earlier work. He returned to playwriting in 1968. He was inspired to write a new comedy in the early 1970s after the abolition of theatre censorship in Britain permitted him to write without evasion about sexual activities, one of his favourite topics. The resulting play, The Bed Before Yesterday (1975), presented when he was 89, was the longest-running of all his stage works, easily outplaying any of his Aldwych farces.

Yo robo, tu chantajeas, ella estafa y, ademas, un muerto, 1984, TV adaptation in Spanish of Plunder, adapted by Esteve Duran. In 1908, after the death of his mother, Travers returned to London to keep his father company. [1] He endured his work at the family firm for three more years until, in 1911, he met the publisher John Lane of the Bodley Head, who offered him a job as a publisher's reader. Lane's firm had been in existence for a little over twenty years and had an avant garde reputation; among Lane's first publications were The Yellow Book and Wilde's Salome. [12] Travers worked for Lane for three years, during which he accompanied his employer on business trips to the US and Canada. [13] A series of 12 farces which started at the Shaftesbury Theatre before moving into (and revitalising) the Aldwych. The producers of the farces, Tom Walls and Leslie Henson became the Licensees of the theatre.The following table shows the opening and closing dates, and the number of performances given, in the original productions of the Aldwych farces. All were written by Ben Travers, except where otherwise shown: [18] Title

Julian Clary – Camping at the Aldwych (Preview 29 January, opened 30 January 1991, closed 9 March 1991) In film [ edit ] Winifred Shotter, leading lady in eight of the original farces and five of the filmed versionsWhile at the Malacca outpost Travers had little work and much leisure; in the local library he found a complete set of the plays of Pinero. He later said he fell on them with rapturous excitement and found each volume "a guidebook to the technique of stagecraft." [9] They rekindled his interest in the theatre, his earlier wish to be an actor now overtaken by his determination to be a dramatist. [9] [n 2] He later told Pinero that he had learnt more from him than from all other playwrights put together. [11] His greatest lesson from Pinero was that "however absurd the incidents of a play they had to arise from a basis of reality. The people should never be mere grotesques. Ideally they should be as matter-of-fact – or apparently so – as the people across the road." [5] The farces proved popular, and touring casts were regularly sent to the provinces. [10] Some touring players, such as William Daunt (1893–1938) who played the Ralph Lynn roles, made considerable personal successes in the 1920s playing Aldwych farces in the provinces. [11] Lynn's younger brother Hastings Lynn, played his brother's roles in successful productions in Australia and New Zealand. [12] Among the up-and-coming performers who appeared in Aldwych farces before becoming famous were Roger Livesey, [13] Margot Grahame, [14] and Norma Varden. [14] After five years of extraordinary success, Walls' business partnership with Henson ended in September 1927 during the run of Thark, and from October, the Aldwych farces were presented by the firm of Tom Walls and Reginald Highley Ltd. [15] By 1930, Walls was losing interest in the theatre, turning his attention to the cinema. He did not appear in the last three of the twelve Aldwych farces, which had disappointing runs. 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. [2] And last week, the Donmar in London opened a version of the 1962 play The Physicists by the Swiss-German absurdist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, which strikingly echoes What the Butler Saw. In both, a police investigation takes place in a mental hospital, which contains a psychiatrist who may be more deranged than the patients – perfect examples of the reversals of logic and expectation on which farce depends.

Banana Ridge (1941, with Walter C. Mycroft and Lesley Storm, from the Travers play of the same name) [19] English Shakespeare Company: Coriolanus & The Winters’ Tale(3 April 1991 – ?May 1991) Limited Season. Running 25 April. Closed by 10 May A retired Scotland Yard inspector meets mayhem on the trail of a stolen antique vase. Aldwych FarcesRalph Clifford Lynn (8 March 1882 – 8 August 1962) was an English actor who had a 60-year career, and is best remembered for playing comedy parts in the Aldwych farces first on stage and then in film. Travers should be regarded as an important figure post-Pinero and pre-Orton, and certainly one of the most skilled of British farceurs