Any Old Thing

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This consists of a number of disconnected little sketches. With one exception I do not any one need to be ruled out. Every now and then the dialogue is vulgar but I do not think anything specially calls for excision. The scenes are not numbered: I add numbers for convenience. The first is merely prefatory; the cast sing a dirge on the death of revue a la cock robin and decided on combining various sorts of shows in its place. Scene II develops the idea of ‘mandarins’ as in the evening news cartoons. No personal allusion is indicated. Scene III is in 2 parts, the first showing a woman calling on another with ‘what they said’, and the other the same carries out the same idea in a tube about people giving up their seats and scene V is just a private rebuked by a colonel and then (I the same idea) rounding on the colonel in turn. It is only chaff and can have no objection from a military point of view, I think. Scene VI ‘do you take sugar’ I will deal with at the end. Scene VII is a ‘polyglot pantomime’, a medley of pantomime themes and topical allusion to food-hoarding. Scene VIII ‘’letting a flat’ is harmless fun. In scene IV ‘Old Bill among the conchies’, Old Bill pretends to be a doctor frightening conscientious objects by passing them as fit for service, they being told the fit will have to go. It is of course an attack on the, but I don’t think the justice or otherwise concerns this office. Scene V is a dumb show skit on ‘between the lines’ with comic explanations. Finally there is a sketch by Captain Bairnsfather and Captain Eliot, showing Old Bill and his friends in civilian life again and then with a quick change they are back in the trenches; it is only a dream. There is some firing in the end but I think not enough to alarm any nervous person with the idea of a raid. With regard to ‘Do You Take Sugar’ (I have put in a slip) the scene is a bedroom. A wife says goodbye to her husband who is off to catch a train. Then she summons her lover by telegram and after some talk between her and the maid in which the maid shows she knows of his visits he arrives, the husband returns unexpectedly and the lover hides under the bed. After some business about the husband’s slippers he orders coffee and then invites the lover (whose presence he presumably had guessed to come out and have some. This is not indecent in the technical sense, but it is stupidly immoral and I think should be cut out. otherwise the show is recommended for license. G. S. Street. ‘Do You Take Sugar’ for the Pavilion Theatre - this sketch has now been altered with the result that there is nothing to which the Lord Chamberlain need object. The bedroom is replaced by a drawing room. The man is not a lover come by summons but merely a man who lives in a flat above and has mistaken the door. He turns out to be an old admirers of the women and hides when the husband returns for fear of misunderstanding. The rest proceeds as originally but the above mentioned alterations take away the offensiveness. G. S. Street. PS - in the other sketch the change of colonel to sergeant has not been sent in but I suppose they can be trusted to make it. G S .S.