Middlesex Music Hall, London

‘With a revue occupying the first place in the programme, and a sketch the second, the usual order of things is reversed at the Middlesex this week. The sketch is Charles Austin’s latest Parker piece entitled “Parker’s Appeal,” and each of its three scenes is chock full of the characteristic humour of the popular comedian. It was fully dealt with in a recent issue of The Stage in connection with its production at the Surrey, and nothing more is needed upon the present occasion concerning one of the most laughable sketches with Charles Austin has hitherto been associated than a brief record of several improvements in the dialogue. The full cast is not given upon the programme, which is rather a pity’. The Stage, 15 November 1917.

‘Described as an entirely new musical burlesque, in seven scenes, by H. Goring and John A. Howitt, and with music composed and arranged by Max Darewski, Jolly Times made a first appearance before a London audience at the Middlesex on Monday evening. Let it be said at once that the so-called book, so far as it affects any plot or story, is practically non-existent. The general scheme of things is decidedly weak, and the various musical numbers are introduced solely upon their own isolated merits. The inhabitants, male and female, of the village of Winsea join the Colours; there are subsequent scenes in France, with a thin thread of love interest for the nominal hero and heroine, and that’s all there is to it, as our American friends would say. Jolly Times, in fact, might have been concocted three, or even four, years ago, when anything remotely resembling a revue passed muster among indulgent war-time audiences. The piping times of peace will surely demand better material’. The Stage, 28 November 1918, which named the cast as Jos Alexandre, Billie Fiman, Adrian Burgon, Florence Williams, Dolly Vernon, Madge Merle and Chares L. Vivian plus ‘a chorus of discharged soldiers, Waacs, Wrens, Wrafs, and so on’. The songs mentioned in the review were Down in Borneo Isle, I’ve Been Walking Out With My W.A.A.C. and Brave Old Contemptibles.