Hullo! Projectiles!

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a revue apparently written solely for the appreciation and enjoyment of munition workers, who alone will find point in most of its scenes and verbal humours. Its action opens outside the works with trouble between the foreman and the female employees; and this is followed by the refusal of the unpopular proprietor of the works to let his son marry his typist. After this come some recreation scenes for the workers, who get up a kind of revue of their own, figuring with song and dance as cow-girls etc. in Arizona, and as lady-labourers on a farm. The incoherent nonsense, which is full of technical allusions to shell-making, winds up with a burlesque upon the proceeds at a labour-bureau. There is no offence in any of the witless rubbish though there is doubtful taste in the sham marriage ceremony playfully performed at the end of the 1st scene (pp.7 and 8) by the chief low-comedian posing as ‘parson’. No one, however, is likely to take the feeble joke seriously so do not think it need be interfered with. Recommended for license, Ernest A. Bendall.

Researcher's Summary:

G. Belbah was likely a female munition worker in Lancaster. The play was reported as being 'home-made' by the 'girl munition workers with all the artists being employed in the national projectile' factory nearby and most of the jokes in the revue related to factory topics. The profits of the performance went to the Lancaster Infirmary to which each munition girl contributed a weekly penny from her wages. For the week of 14-19 May 1917 the performance was given twice-nightly (Yorkshire Evening Post, 18 May 1917).