Aldwych farce
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.
[5] It took Travers some time to establish a satisfactory working relationship with Walls, whom he found difficult as an actor-manager, and also distressingly unprepared as an actor.
[7] The Aldwych farces also featured a regular team of supporting actors: Robertson Hare as a figure of put-upon respectability; Mary Brough in eccentric old lady roles; Ethel Coleridge as the severe voice of authority; the saturnine Gordon James as the "heavy"; and first Yvonne Arnaud, then Winifred Shotter, as the sprightly young female lead.
[8] 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.
[7] The scripts incorporated and developed British low comedy styles, particularly "silly-asses, henpecked husbands, battleaxe mothers-in-law and lots of innocent misunderstandings.
[12] Among the up-and-coming performers who appeared in Aldwych farces before becoming famous were Roger Livesey,[13] Margot Grahame,[14] and Norma Varden.
[2] In 1952, three years after Walls's death, Lynn and Hare starred at the Aldwych in a new Travers farce, Wild Horses.
[7][17] The following table shows the opening and closing dates, and the number of performances given, in the original productions of the Aldwych farces.
[29] In 1970, BBC presented adaptations of six of the Aldwych series (and another Travers farce, She Follows Me About) with Arthur Lowe and Richard Briers in the Walls and Lynn roles.
