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. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

Cuckoo in the Nest is an early version of the 1954 'Fast and Loose' (Stanley Holloway, Kay Kendal and other worthies). definition as her starting-point and expands it herself, she does not seem to notice that the resulting description neglects the genre's capacities for serious import, subtlety, and laughter that repays analysis: "A dramatic work (usually short) which has for its sole object to excite laughter" (s. 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. Most often, the joke entails the failure ofthe attempt; but it is afailure which must also touch the audience, since the joke is on us all as members of the human race. This was a great popular success, running for nearly two years, and they collaborated again, moving to the Aldwych Theatre.The plays were presented by the actor-manager Tom Walls and starred Walls and Ralph Lynn, supported by a regular company that included Robertson Hare, Mary Brough, Winifred Shotter, Ethel Coleridge, and Gordon James.

Meanwhile, Ben Travers' first play, The Dippers, based on his 1920 novel of the same name, was produced and directed by Sir Charles Hawtrey. 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. Lynn and Hulbert are both hopeless at holding down jobs but get mixed up in some dodgy shares that threaten to throw the family into disgrace. To satisfy the suspicious, god-fearing harridan of a landlady (Mary Brough) they pose as a married couple.The scripts contain many funny lines, wordplay and situations, and the performers have honed wonderful timing through their years of association. 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. centres around Ralph Lynn accidentally being forced to spend the night at a country inn with an old flame (Yvonne Arnaud) after they both miss their train, hire a car together and become stuck in the rain. Walls and Lynn would each make solo films as well, but their careers began to wind down in the late ’30s. It takes place at Christmas, with Walls and Lynn joined by Robertson Hare in the main nucleus of characters.

Two of the best farces (issued on Volume 2 of Network’s DVD series) featured other actors outside the main trio.The first of these plays was an updated and Anglicised adaptation of an American play of 1914; a version of the original play was filmed in the US in 1931, starring Norman Foster, Carole Lombard, and Richard "Skeets" Gallagher.