A Cuckoo in the Nest

Travers made a film adaptation, which Walls directed in 1933, with most of the leading members of the stage cast reprising their roles.

Major Bone thinks there is some innocent explanation, but Barbara and her mother believe that Peter has run off with the unknown foreigner.

Only one bedroom is available, and as it is very clear that Mrs Spoker will not admit an unmarried couple, Peter and Marguerite check in as husband and wife.

This deception has to be perpetuated publicly when they meet another guest at the inn, the Rev Cathcart Sloley-Jones, who knows Marguerite; she introduces Peter as her husband, Claude Hickett.

Peter cedes the bed to Marguerite, while he makes several unsuccessful attempts to find a tolerably comfortable spot on the bedroom floor, which has "a triple-direction draught".

The Times praised the performances and the play: "Let it be added that, though the clou of the farce is a 'bedroom scene', the entire entertainment is the pink of propriety.

"[6] Looking back at the Aldwych farces in 1962, J. C. Trewin considered the pinnacle to be "Lynn trying to sleep beneath a washstand in A Cuckoo in the Nest and his manifold agonies as he reeled, writhed and plaited himself in coils through the watches of the night.

He had not previously thought highly of either Walls or Lynn: "The father-in-law who was the leading support character in the Cuckoo called for a straight comedy actor.

Travers was pleased to be proved wrong: "The glorious restrained study that Tom made of the befuddled Major Bone surprised me as much as it gratified me."

Travers wrote the screenplay, and Walls, Lynn, Arnaud, Hare and Brough reprised their old stage roles.

[9] The play was not revived in London for more than thirty years, until Anthony Page directed a production for the English Stage Company at the Royal Court in 1964.

It starred Arthur Lowe and Nicol Williamson in the Walls and Lynn roles, with Beatrix Lehmann as the landlady, Ann Beach as Marguerite, and Rosalind Knight and John Osborne as the pursuing spouses.

[10] The BBC broadcast a radio version of the play on Christmas Day 1983, with Freddie Jones and Ian Lavender in the leads, and Joan Hickson, Margaret Tyzack and Phoebe Nicholls in the cast.

Yvonne Arnaud , Ralph Lynn and Mary Brough in the 1925 production
From left: Major Bone, Peter, Marguerite, Claude Hickett and Barbara Wykeham, 1925 original cast
Marguerite Hickett ( Yvonne Arnaud ) and her dog
elderly looking man avidly pouring himself a glass of port
Tom Walls as Major Bone with port decanter