Cheep

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

The intention of this Revue seems really to be the production of innocent fun and there is hardly a line in the last degree suggestive or even vulgar in any bad sense of the adjective. It starts with the now familiar business of a manager at a loss for his next Revue. 'Johnny Walker' comes to his aid, and so do the typical pantomime figures. The principals are consulted and joke with one another. Eventually they decide to call it 'Cheep' - a bird making the noise - the word being appropriate to the cheapness demanded by contemporary conditions. When the resulting Revue starts there are, in the first act, a burlesque of cinema melodrama, a scene of aristocrats reduced to buying coal, etc. personally, a scene of course on the land - this one with a really good and true touch about it - some imitations and some fun with glee singers. Act II consists largely of scenes which are merely songs, one a conjuring scene; for the rest there are a trench scene, with nothing grating about it, a domestic comedy of a spoilt child going to school, a quarrel and reconciliation of husband and wife, and a comic scene of the lift of a tube. Act I, p.57. A joke about President and 'Will-soon', will, I should think, be cut anyhow, now that America is in. Act II scene VIII, p.1 (slip) a joke about 'Meatless nights', night to be taken in a bad sense, obviously, but as the script says 'meet' not 'meat' - it can be defended: perhaps it is hardly worth troubling about. There is nothing else in the least objectionable. Recommended for Licence. G. S. Street