After The War

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

The central idea of this farce is not a very happy one. One Austin Murray is 'Controller of Reconstruction' after the war. He has passed several annoying resolutions, as that no [...] except in tabloid form is permitted and no servants are to be kept. But the chief is the 'Lateral Marriage' act compelling every man under forty to have two wives. Col. John Eastwood returns from abroad to find himself threatened with its penalties and perused by ladies who want to be his 'lateral wife', much to the disgust of himself and his wife who are devoted to one another. Then the act is extended to men of fifty, and Austin himself is include, much to his dismay: he is a bachelor. To save himself he produces seven children: under the act seven children make a man exempt. The children are at once claimed as hers by Jemima, who is Mrs Eastwood's servant, passing as her paying guest. Then Austin wants to marry a nice girl called Coral, who naturally refuses him and says she will the colonel's nominal second wife to save him from Dartmoor. The affair is complicated by a scheming girl Pauline, who wants to marry Austin. Eventually Jemima explains that the seven children, whom Austen had hired from a crèche, were only children she had adopted out of the slums; Pauline is routed and everything is put right by the abolition of the inconvenient law and Austen and Coral are going to marry. The idea is not happy, because jokes about two wives and that sort of thing - the two wives for instance, of a minor character quarrelling about precedence - are apt to be in more or less bad taste. There is really no harm in the play, and a much more vulgar one with the same idea - a three scene play with songs called 'Three Bites' - has been passed. Miss Jennings keeps off bad taste with fair success, and much of her dialogue is genuinely bright and amusing. It is all wild farce, only, not of the happiest sort. Recommended for licence. G. S. Street. April 26 1920. Two harmless something have been added to this play.