Whitehall farce

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The Whitehall Theatre (now known as The Trafalgar Studios)

The Whitehall farces were a series of five long-running comic stage plays at the Whitehall Theatre in London, presented by the actor-manager Brian Rix, in the 1950s and 60s. They were in the low comedy tradition of British farce, following the Aldwych farces, which played at the Aldwych Theatre between 1924 and 1933.[1]

History

The farces; critical reception

The five farces were as follows:

Title Author Premiere Closed Performances
Reluctant Heroes Colin Morris 12 September 1950[2] 24 July 1954[3] 1,610[4]
Dry Rot John Chapman 31 August 1954[5] 15 March 1958[6] 1,475[4]
Simple Spymen John Chapman 19 March 1958[7] 29 July 1961[8]1,403[4]
One For the Pot Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton 2 August 1961[9] 4 July 1964[10]~1,210
Chase Me, Comrade Ray Cooney 15 July 1964[11]21 May 1966[12]~765

Rix built a company of regular players who appeared in some or all of these shows. They included Leo Franklyn, Larry Noble, Dennis Ramsden and Derek Royle,[13] and members of Rix's family: his wife, Elspet Gray, his sister, Sheila Mercier and his brother-in-law, Peter Mercier. Others who appeared in one or more of the Whitehall farces include Terry Scott[14] and Andrew Sachs.[15] Rix starred in all five plays, in a range of roles: a "gormless recruit" to the army in Reluctant Heroes;[16] a timidly crooked bookie's runner in Dry Rot;[17] a street musician recruited as a secret agent in Simple Spymen;[18] four identical brothers in One For the Pot;[19] and a harassed civil servant in Chase Me, Comrade.[20] From Dry Rot onwards, Rix and his authors developed a double act for the Rix characters and those played by Leo Franklyn, in which the two performers played off one another rather as Ralph Lynn and Tom Walls had done in the Aldwych farces of the previous generation.[21]

Although the five plays had long runs and packed houses, most London critics were snobbishly dismissive of them. Looking back in 1980, Michael Coveney wrote of the Whitehall farces, "A tradition of critical snobbery has grown up around these plays, partly because they were so blatantly popular but chiefly because of our conviction that farce, unless written by a Frenchman, is an inferior theatrical species. … Once the National Theatre has done its duty by Priestley and Rattigan and others teetering on the brink of theatrical respectability I suggest they employ Mr. Rix … to investigate the ignored riches of English farce between Travers and Ayckbourn."[22] The few London critics of the 1950s and 60s who did not take a lofty view included Harold Hobson, Ronald Bryden, J. W. Lambert and Alan Dent.[23]

Television broadcasts; later productions

In addition to the five long-running farces, Rix presented a series of more than eighty one-off televised comedies, some of them farces, for the BBC. The first was transmitted live from the Whitehall Theatre in January 1956.[24]

In 1966, having been unable to secure the lease of the Whitehall Theatre, Rix took his company on tour in Chase Me, Comrade and Bang, Bang Beirut (later retitled Stand By Your Bedouin), by Cooney and Hilton.[25] Later productions by the Rix company at the Garrick Theatre and elsewhere included Uproar in the House, by Anthony Marriott and Alistair Foot (1967); Let Sleeping Wives Lie by Harold Brooke and Kay Bannerman (1967); She's Done It Again, by Michael Pertwee (1969); Don't Just Lie There, Say Something (Pertwee, 1971); and A Bit Between the Teeth (Pertwee, 1974). According to Leslie Smith in a study of modern British farce, although some of the Rix productions after Chase Me, Comrade achieved substantial success, none of them had the conspicuously long runs of the five Whitehall farces.[26]

Notes

  1. ↑ Nightingale, Benedict. "Theater; England's Endless Love Affair with Farce", The New York Times, 30 August 1987, 2 June 2012
  2. ↑ Gaye, p. 1537
  3. ↑ "Theatres", The Times 21 July 1954, p. 2
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "12 Successful Years for Mr. Brian Rix", The Times, 13 September 1962, p. 12
  5. ↑ Gaye, p. 1530
  6. ↑ "St. Martin's Theatre", The Times, 11 March 1958, p. 3
  7. ↑ Gaye, p. 1538
  8. ↑ "Theatres", The Times, 27 July 1961, p. 2
  9. ↑ Gaye, p. 1536
  10. ↑ "Theatres", The Times, 1 July 1964, p. 2
  11. ↑ Gaye, p. 193
  12. ↑ Smith, p. 91
  13. ↑ Smith, p. 97
  14. ↑ Gaye, p. 100
  15. ↑ Chapman, p. 3
  16. ↑ "Whitehall Theatre", The Times, 13 September 1950, p. 6
  17. ↑ Smith, p. 76
  18. ↑ Chapman, passim
  19. ↑ Smith, p. 86
  20. ↑ Smith, p. 93
  21. ↑ Smith, pp. 58, 77 and 84
  22. ↑ Coveney, Michael. "Simple Spymen", The Financial Times, 11 August 1980, p. 9
  23. ↑ Smith, p. 70
  24. ↑ Rix, Brian. "The Whitehall farces had a major role in the TV-theatre relationship", The Guardian, 7 April 2010
  25. ↑ Smith, p. 96
  26. ↑ Smith, pp. 97–98

References

  • Chapman, John (1960). Simple Spymen – a farce. London: English Theatre Guild. OCLC 13446148. 
  • Gaye, Freda (ed.) (1967). Who's Who in the Theatre (fourteenth ed.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC 5997224. 
  • Smith, Leslie (1967). "Brian Rix and the Whitehall Farces". Modern British Farce: A Selective Study of British Farce from Pinero to the Present Day. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN 0333448782. 
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