Great War Theatre

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a fairly amusing revue on the whole, with a few really witty incidents and 'lines'. It starts with 'Revue' sick in bed and allegorical business of doctor's and so forth. Then an Indian scene; a satire on dismal people in the persons of Mr and Mrs Killjoy; a domestic sketch with the positions of mistresses and servants inverted; a flirting scene and a 'marriage tribunal; scene, in which characters are ordered to marry one another and so on. The last scene might easily have been 'suggestive', but it is not, except possibly for a remark about a chorus girl being a volunteer: (p46 and 50) I think it would be prudish to object to this. The second act begins with a railway station scene (aged porter, no trains etc), goes on to a scene of two men studying a railway map which another insists on being a War map, and ends with a burlesque of spy plays and music hall entertainments, the idea being that the authorities have cut performances down to ten minutes. I find nothing to object to. I have marked a link in a song (p53) but I do not think it worth noticing. Recommended for Licence. G. S. Street. Tabs - additional scenes. There are two scenes to take the place of 'the matrimonial tribunal' and 'the railway station'. The first gives the history of a rose in 5 episodes. A wife gives it to her husband, the husband to his pretty typist, the typist to her young man, the young man to the wife, with who he is flirting, and eventually the husband cleans his pipe with its wire. The second scene is at a tube. Jimmy vows he will propose to Ethel if she is punctual at an appointment; she is punctual and he proposes and is accepted; and then it appears that she came to meet Jack having forgotten the appointment with Jimmy. There is no harm in either scene. G. S. Street. Tabs additional matter to be produced at the Vaudeville Theatre 1) A rather pointless duologue between a girl and a young man, 2) 'Selling a piano!' business of a shop man showing a customer the same piano after she has rejected it and of her eventually leaving without buying anything, rather amusing in its way. 3) 'The fiction and the fact', six little dialogues illustrating the examples of opposition between fact and fiction; a) a husband and wife, ideal contested with reality of quarrelling, b) the difference between the servant's account of how she 'stood up to her mistress and what actually happened, and c) the quiet day in bed ordered a man by his doctor and the reality of continual disturbances. There is no visible harm in any of these scenes. Recommended for licence. G. S. Street. 'A matter of form' additional matter for 'tabs' at the Vaudeville. An amusing topical trifle. A wife describes the sad symptoms of her husband to the doctor, how he throws things about and sits in the dark and so on, and when the doctor and the rest approach him they find him struggling with a fuel control form. Recommended for Licence. G. S. Street.

Licensed On: 7 May 1918

License Number: 1553

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British Library Reference: LCP1918/8

British Library Classmark: Add MS 66190 X

Performances

Date Theatre Type
11 May 1918 Vaudeville Theatre, London Unknown Licensed Performance