Lyceum Theatre, Dumfries

‘The delightfully entertaining play, “The Man who stayed at home,” visits Dumfries next week, and will be staged at the Lyceum on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings. It has been described as the play of the moment, and the company is a strong one’ (Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 17 January 1917). Previewed in the Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 20 January 1917: ‘The cast includes: George Howard, Russell Bendle, Owen Cassidy, Herbert Rouen, George Percy, J. Edward Pearce, Nora Kingsley, Agnes Thornton, Barbara Hall, Agnes Lowson, Duff Earle Howard, Ethel Coleridge’. ‘It is not surprising that “The Man who Stayed at Home” made such a hit when first produced in London. It was placed before the public just when the German spy scare was at its height: and if, as one would imagine, the play is founded to a certain extent upon fact, the British Secret Service must have had a very busy time discovering and harrying the nests of the Teutonic wasps that apparently swarmed in our coast resorts and elsewhere. It is an excellent play, thrilling at one moment, amusing the next, with here and there an anti-climax clever as it is funny. In these days, of course, when spies and war generally have become part of our daily life, the piece does not possess the same degree of appeal that it did earlier, but it still has the power to thrill ' (Dumfries and Galloway Standard, 24 January 1917).