Her Escape

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a sketch avowedly intended to ‘make parents realize the deadly danger of the greatest social evil’, so its subject would, until lately, have been considered to unfit it for the stage. Beyond the inevitable offensiveness of the subject - which is of course syphilis - there is no harm in it. It consists merely of an abortive attempt by a girl, who is engaged to a wealthy rake, to obtain from her mother some 'reassurance' about the ‘secret plague’ of which she has read in the papers, and her attempted discussion of which is now snubbed as ‘forward and unladylike’. The mother’s refusal - very unlikely in the circumstances - to enlighten the girl, is followed by a call from her dissolute fiancé’s possible mistress, to warn her that he is in the hands of a doctor and that she ‘might as well sign her death-warrant as marry him’. On the ‘propaganda’ theory, which presumably holds good for music-halls as well as theatres, the dramatic warning against disease must, I suppose, now be recommended for license, Ernest A. Bendall

Researcher's Summary:

When the Examiner of Plays observed that the subject of Her Escape ‘would, until lately, have been considered to unfit it for the stage’, he no doubt had in mind that it was only three months previously that Eugène Brieux’s play Damaged Goods (which is also in the Great War Theatre database), on the same subject, had been allowed its first public performance on the English commercial stage. In the week beginning Monday 11 June 1917 the Palace Theatre, Maidstone, hosted a musical burlesque, The Carnival Girl, which, according to the Maidstone Telegraph, 16 June 1917, contained ‘funny scenes, with old songs and new’, bright and catchy music, jokes and conversation with a military flavour, ‘artistic poses’, smart comediennes and dancers – not an obvious vehicle for a play about syphilis. In the following week the theatre had a variety programme which also seems unlikely to have included Her Escape. No evidence of performances of Her Escape has been found, including in accounts of other performances of The Carnival Girl later in 1917.