Aldwych Farces Vol. 1 [DVD]

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Some touring players, such as William Daunt (1893–1938) who played the Ralph Lynn roles, made considerable personal successes in the 1920s playing Aldwych farces in the provinces. A newlywed man gives shelter to a damsel in distress in his wife's absence, and has to head off scandal stirred up by his interfering sister-in-law.

TURKEY TIME’ boasts much better direction, including the interesting idea of giving each character a little vignette to introduce themselves in the opening credit sequence.

Tom Walls directed the films, and has been accused of directing the actors in a stage play and then pointing the camera at them. This particular release has been discontinued, however you may still be able to find second-hand copies. A series of now-legendary stage comedies from the 1920s and '30s, the Aldwych Farces broke theatre box-office records and made the transition to celluloid with a run of hit films making stars of Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn and Robertson Hare.

The following table shows the opening and closing dates, and the number of performances given, in the original productions of the Aldwych farces.In Pinero's Dandy Dick, a rural dean succumbs to the temptation of gambling on the horses; in Travers's Plunder, two jewel thieves get away with robbery and manslaughter; and in Orton's Loot, police conspire with bank robbers to put the one innocent character behind bars. But Davis herself reminds us that farce embodies an essential human predicament: "Comedy is drawn from the most human of strivings: our continual impulse to rebel against convention and morality and our continued efforts to master our own bodies and our physical environment. The comic break-in scenes are excellent and this turns into maybe the funniest of all the films on the two discs. Things get a bit slow toward the end, but there are many funny sequences, including a dotty fantasy sequence that sends the whole cast back to the Stone Age.

In his place is the superb comic character Gordon Harker, who brings his rough-edged posh cockney (“Oh yerrrrrrs”) to the table. Walls secured a cheap, long-term lease on the theatre, which had fallen so far out of fashion with playgoers that it had been used as a YMCA hostel during the First World War. This ongoing range will include not only the Aldwych Farces themselves but those films that they influenced.In the 1950s and early 1960s, a similar hit series of farces began at the Whitehall Theatre and came to be known as Whitehall farces. Bought to watch at Xmas -the best time to watch a farce -as the BBC broadcast a great version of 'Turkey Time' on radio about 25 years ago which I listen to every year and Robertson Hare was a legend. Most were penned by leading comic playwright Ben Travers and peopled by a regular cast of silly-ass aristocrats, battleaxe wives and put-upon husbands; nimble wordplay and finely crafted buffoonery were their hallmarks and the public loved them. The first in the Aldwych farce series was It Pays to Advertise, which ran for nearly 600 performances.