Ben Travers’s farce was premiered during the General Strike of 1926 when it ran for 409 performances and became the most famous of all the Aldwych farces. It is extremely difficult these days to revive his comedies successfully because they relied so much on the personalities, comic business and timing of the original actors, all then household names and brilliant farceurs in their own right. It will be very interesting to see if an expert such as director Terry Johnson can still make the play funny for today’s audience.
