Aldwych Farces Vol. 1 [DVD]

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It takes place at Christmas, with Walls and Lynn joined by Robertson Hare in the main nucleus of characters. As Freud pointed out in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1904), the fantasies ofhumour, heedless of taboos, channel underlying, more primitive impulses to express themselves in , ways forbidden by the conscious mind. The farces were so popular that touring companies were sent to present them in the British provinces. But, they offer plenty of smiles and even the odd belly laugh, and point a clear way to the later character ensembles of Ealing and the Boulting Brothers. 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.

Unfortunately, Lynn’s wife has witnessed them going off together and followed, in tow with her dreadful mother and alcoholic old fruit of a father (Tom Walls).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. It is this genre with which this study is concerned: broad, physical, visual comedy, whose effects are pre-eminently theatrical and intended solely to entertain; comedy which is slapstick, ifyou like, in a more or less coherently funny narrative.

The highlight is undoubtedly Robertson Hare’s horror at being forced to shave his moustache and try on wigs to disguise himself as the burglar! 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. TURKEY TIME’ boasts much better direction, including the interesting idea of giving each character a little vignette to introduce themselves in the opening credit sequence. Cuckoo in the Nest is an early version of the 1954 'Fast and Loose' (Stanley Holloway, Kay Kendal and other worthies). 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.In any case, the Aldwych films mostly survive their limitations to remain pleasant and entertaining examples of a bygone form of entertainment. Most were penned by leading comic playwright Ben Travers and peopled by a regular cast of silly-ass aristocrats, battleaxe wives and put-upon husbands; nimble wordplay and finely crafted buffoonery were their hallmarks and the public loved them. The scripts contain many funny lines, wordplay and situations, and the performers have honed wonderful timing through their years of association. Some of the films do indeed suffer from this, and there are some rather long scenes that need a bit more pep, closer to the stodgy, theatrical style we tend to associate with 30s films.

This ongoing range will include not only the Aldwych Farces themselves but those films that they influenced. Walls is a pugnacious chap, whose fights land him in bother, especially with his fiancé when he defends the honour of a showgirl on the pier.The first in the Aldwych farce series was It Pays to Advertise, which ran for nearly 600 performances. A CUP OF KINDNESS’ (1934) benefits from the additional presence of silly-ass Claude Hulbert, who I always find irresistible. The Aldwych farces of the 1920s and 1930s provide a classic example of a fruitful collaboration between a playwright — Ben Travers — and a team of actors, headed by Ralph Lynn, Robertson Hare and Tom Walls, who managed and directed the company. In Pinero's Dandy Dick, a rural dean succumbs to the temptation of gambling on the horses; in Travers's Plunder, two jewel thieves get away with robbery and manslaughter; and in Orton's Loot, police conspire with bank robbers to put the one innocent character behind bars. It is a staple of repertory companies from Dundee to Wolverhampton, Colchester and Oxford, [23] and has been revived in four productions in the West End.

IO The "blowing off steam" - from Feydeau's La Dame de chez Maxim, through Travers's Rookery Nook, to Orton's What the Butler Saw, Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce and Stoppard'sDirtyLinen - usually involves real or suspected sexual misadventures, infidelity, adultery, or the confusion ofsexual roles. The following table shows the opening and closing dates, and the number of performances given, in the original productions of the Aldwych farces. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves. Lawrence Grossmith had acquired the rights to Travers' farce A Cuckoo in the Nest and sold them to Walls. This was a great popular success, running for nearly two years, and they collaborated again, moving to the Aldwych Theatre.Archive: "Tom Walls (1883 – 1949)" Archived 16 September 2012 at the Wayback Machine, British Pictures.