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Aldwych Farces Vol. 1 [DVD]

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Nevertheless, farce exploits for its own humorous or subversive purposes a constant ofhuman nature: the conflict between the rational and the animal, civilized restraint and primitive impulse, authority and licence. Heilman make these astonishing assertions in their drama textbook: "the situations in farce do not mean anything: .

Lawrence Grossmith had acquired the rights to Travers' farce A Cuckoo in the Nest and sold them to Walls. As at 2013, the only other of the twelve to have been revived in the West End is Thark, in 1965 and 1989. The films introduced the farces to cinema audiences and were produced by a number of film distributors including the British and Dominions Film Corporation, Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, and Gainsborough Pictures. 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.In the early days, he also had reservations about the other star of the company, Ralph Lynn, who initially ad-libbed too much for the author's taste. DIRTY WORK stands slightly apart from the other farces in that Tom Walls doesn’t appear , though he still directs. The plays generally revolved around a series of preposterous incidents involving a misunderstanding, borrowed clothes and lost trousers, involving the worldly Walls character, the innocent yet cheeky Lynn, the hapless Hare, the beefy, domineering Brough, the lean, domineering Coleridge, and the pretty and slightly spicy Shotter, all played with earnest seriousness.

Travers noted that the ad-libbing diminished as he came to anticipate and include in his scripts "the sort of thing Ralph himself would have said in the circumstances". 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.

The first in the Aldwych farce series was It Pays to Advertise, which ran for nearly 600 performances. Farce releases inhibitions, offers a holiday from conventional morality, and permits both outrage and the triumph of the carnival spirit. In 1952, three years after Walls's death, Lynn and Hare starred at the Aldwych in a new Travers farce, Wild Horses. As Freud pointed out in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1904), the fantasies ofhumour, heedless of taboos, channel underlying, more primitive impulses to express themselves in , ways forbidden by the conscious mind.

As the sound era dawned, it was possible to create faithful screen adaptations of the farces, and ROOKERY NOOK (1930) ushered in a series that would be popular throughout the early and mid-thirties. A CUP OF KINDNESS’ (1934) benefits from the additional presence of silly-ass Claude Hulbert, who I always find irresistible. 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.Two classic farces from the golden era of Aldwych, "A Cuckoo in the Nest" one of the most famous of the series, displaying the talents of Ralph Lynn, Tom Walls and Robertson Hare to particularly splendid advantage.

Some of the films do indeed suffer from this, and there are some rather long scenes that need a bit more pep, closer to the stodgy, theatrical style we tend to associate with 30s films.

J. Potts describes it as "comedy with the meaning left OUt"l; Allardyce Nicoll regards "gross and improbable characterisation" as symptomatic of ie; and Cleanth Brooks and Robert B. This was a great popular success, running for nearly two years, and they collaborated again, moving to the Aldwych Theatre. Most of the Aldwych farces were adapted for film in the 1930s, starring the original stage casts as far as possible. Cuckoo in the Nest is an early version of the 1954 'Fast and Loose' (Stanley Holloway, Kay Kendal and other worthies). Naturally, Yvonne’s husband also turns up on the scene, leading to lots of awkward moments for Ralph.

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