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  • Home
  • Productions
    • Future Productions
    • Popular Playwrights
  • Archive
    • 2020- >
      • The Absence Of War
      • Funny Money
      • A Frightful Evening
      • The Ghost Train
      • Jekyll & Hyde
      • Ladies Down Under
      • The Last Quiz Night On Earth
      • A Legal Murder
      • Silver Lining
      • Steaming
      • Underground
      • The Western Approaches
    • 2010-19 >
      • 1 Flat 3 Stories
      • Abandonment
      • Animal Farm
      • Carrington VC
      • A Christmas Carol
      • The Country Wife
      • Crown Matrimonial
      • Easy Virtue
      • Fawlty Towers 2013
      • Fawlty Towers 2015
      • Feed the Beast
      • FlatSpin
      • Hello, Is There Any Body There?
      • The Hollow
      • Ladies Day
      • A Lady Mislaid
      • La Musica & Perfect Partners
      • Love In A Mist
      • Maskerade
      • Misfits
      • Much Ado About Nothing
      • Nobody's Perfect
      • NSFW
      • The Railway Children
      • Salt
      • Sauce For The Goose
      • Six Characters In Search Of An Author
      • This Happy Breed
      • The Thrill of Love
      • Visiting Hour
      • A Wedding Story
      • Wind in the Willows Chelsfield
      • Wind in the Willows Edinburgh
    • 2000-09 >
      • Arsenic and Old Lace
      • Black Comedy
      • Cemetery Club
      • A Chorus Of Disapproval
      • Daisy Pulls It Off
      • Dangerous Corner
      • Fear and Fancy
      • Garden
      • A Ghost On Tiptoe
      • Hobsons Choice
      • House
      • The Importance of Being Earnest
      • Intimate Exchanges
      • Lady Windermeres Fan
      • Loot
      • Lucky Sods
      • Mars & Venus
      • The Merry Wives Of Windsor
      • A Midsummer Night’s Dream
      • Murder In Company
      • My Three Angels
      • New Directions
      • Over My Dead Body
      • Our Country’s Good
      • Out Of Focus
      • Party Piece
      • Proscenophobia
      • Ring Round The Moon
      • The Rivals
      • Steel Magnolias
      • Stepping Out
      • Strictly Murder
    • 1990-99 >
      • Bedroom Farce
      • Blithe Spirit
      • California Suite
      • Deadly Nightcap
      • Dial M For Murder
      • Dick Turpin
      • Gosforths Fete
      • Hay Fever
      • An Inspector Calls
      • The Late Edwina Black
      • Lord Arthur Saviles Crime
      • Miranda
      • Move Over Mrs Markham
      • Not Now, Darling
      • Pleasures And Perils
      • Round And Round The Garden
      • Seasons Greetings
      • Some Confusions
      • Something To Hide
      • Tartuffe
      • Time And Time Again 1993
      • Time And Time Again 1999
      • Time, Murderer, Please
      • Tons Of Money
      • The Weekend
      • When One Door Closes
      • The Woman In White
    • 1980-89 >
      • Anastasia
      • The Barretts Of Wimpole Street
      • The Brontes
      • Busybody
      • Caught Napping
      • A Friend Indeed
      • Full Treatment
      • Gaslight
      • Mother Goose
      • Murder In Company
      • Nightmare
      • Outside Edge
      • Pink String And Sealing Wax
      • Pygmalion
      • Rape Of The Belt
      • Relative Values
      • Return To Victoria
      • Separate Tables
      • Shut Your Eyes and Think of England
      • Suddenly at Home
      • A Tomb With A View
      • Treasure Hunt
      • When We Are Married
    • 1970-79 >
      • The Aspern Papers
      • Brush With A Body
      • The Chiltern Hundreds
      • The Circle
      • Dandy Dick
      • Dear Charles
      • Fish Out Of Water
      • The House Of Bernada Alba
      • The House On The Cliff
      • An Ideal Husband
      • Ladies In Retirement
      • A Letter From The General
      • The Matchmaker
      • The Rivals
      • The Royal Pardon
      • The Schoolmistress
      • Shadow In The Sun
      • Someone Waiting
      • Spiders Web
      • They Came To A City
      • Wanted: One Body
    • 1960-69 >
      • 1066 And All That
      • Aladdin
      • Antigone and The Critic
      • As You Like It
      • Billy Liar
      • The Bread Winner
      • Breath Of Spring
      • Charleys Aunt
      • A Christmas Carol
      • Cinderella 1965
      • Dick Whittington
      • Flowering Cherry
      • Frost At Midnight
      • Hay Fever
      • The Hollow
      • The House By The Lake
      • Macbeth
      • Man Alive
      • The Merchant Of Venice
      • Midsummer Mink
      • A Midsummer Nights Dream
      • Pantomime 1960
      • The Pen of My Aunt, The Women Have Their Way
      • The Pleasure Garden
      • Pygmalion
      • Rookery Nook
      • The Taming Of The Shrew
      • Tobias and the Angel
      • Twelfth Night
      • Waters Of The Moon
      • The Young Elizabeth
    • 1950-59 >
      • After October
      • The Browning Version, Elegant Edward
      • By Candlelight
      • Count Your Blessings
      • Eden End
      • Grand National Night
      • The Happy Prisoner
      • The Holly And The Ivy
      • The Late Christopher Bean
      • Libel
      • Martine
      • Our Town
      • The Queen and the Rebels
      • Thunder Rock
      • Young Wives Tale
    • 1936-49 >
      • Early 1940s plays
      • 20th Century Lullaby
      • And So To Bed
      • Berkeley Square
      • Cinderella
      • The Corn Is Green
      • Dangerous Corner
      • Distinguished Gathering
      • Duet For Two Hands
      • Elegant Edward (1940s)
      • The Ghost Train
      • Hassan
      • The Importance Of Being Earnest
      • Love From A Stranger
      • The Middle Watch
      • New 66 And All That
      • Night Must Fall
      • Noah
      • Pinocchio
      • The Rivals
      • Roberts Wife
      • This Happy Breed
    • Our History
  • Join Us
    • JimSlips
    • Links >
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    • Get In Touch

The Middle Watch

by Ian Hay & Stephen King-Hall, produced by Eric Hart
25 February 1939, Crofton Hall
We know little about The Middle Watch, other than that it was the Players’ third or possibly fourth performance, in February 1939, and was successful enough to encourage the more ambitious Hassan five months later.

With the Society still lacking a permanent home, the play was put on at the Crofton Halls and produced by Eric Hart. A curiously pompous review by one ‘FPR’ in an unidentified local paper seemed more concerned with the application of asterisks to theatre reviews than what was happening before his eyes, and probably left the director and cast (or ‘caste’ as he preferred to spell it) wondering ‘but what did you actually think of the show?’

Without doubt to modern eyes this would seem a quaint and possibly insulting farce concerning British service personnel abroad and predictably stereotyped foreigners, but for its time, when most of the audience would have never met anyone from outside the British Isles, it would have been a diverting evening’s entertainment. The reviewer in a rare moment of clarity described it as “a good result”.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Cast & Crew
Marine Ogg      Teddy Hollands
Ah Fong           TG Collins
Capt Randall    KG Rugg
Fay Eaton         Dorothy Orme
Nancy Hewitt   Joyce Fleming
Cmdr Baddeley Vernon St Clair Tomalin
Charlotte Hopkinson     Kathleen Hart
Adm Sir Hercules Hewitt          Bill Loraine
Mary Carlton    Gladys Hollands
Lady Hewitt     Kathleen Curtis
An Able Seaman          Jack Duffy
Capt Maitland  Francis Paige
Cpl Duckett      Colin George

Stage Manager       Charles Nash
Music & Effects           Ian Riach, Louis Walker
Properties         W Moore
Producer          Eric Hart
Review
Chelsfield Village Hall Dramatic Society provided an extremely amusing evening last Saturday, and our thanks are due to the able cast who performed that ever popular farce, “The Middle Watch.” The British Navy rarely fails to supply a background in which the most unlikely events will occur. Moreover the unpretentious humour supplied by the Marines prevents the audience from whispering mono-syllabic doubts as to the possibility of certain scenes, and the play carefully avoids a superfluity of lingering embraces at which the more flippant are inclined to snigger. Altogether, “The Middle Watch” is an ideal play for amateurs, and the Chelsfield Village Hall ‘Dramatic Society performed it with distinction.

Should we choose to follow the example of the daily newspaper in their award of asterisks by the side of new plays and films according to their quality, and apply this method of criticism to the members of the caste, the Editor would presumably object to the extra printing required. Especially, say, in the case of T. G. Collins, playing the part of Ah Fong, a Chinese servant. The Chinese are supposed, on the whole, to be a silent race, at least in the presence of foreigners. When their mouths do open, there should issue forth words that echo the wisdom of Confucius. Ah Fong, although apparently a bore to his master, Capt. Maitland, was no exception. Unfortunately his wisdom was premature and his complacent acceptance of a situation in which two attractive ladies spend the night in the Captain’s cabin, did not always meet with approval. T. G. Collins gave expression to this complacency in both the way he spoke, the manner he moved, and in the divinely smug attitude he adopted when referring to the “prettee peecee ladees.”

Francis Paige acted the part of Capt. Maitland (R.N.) with confidence, and although his manner of speech was a little monotonous, perhaps it fitted his part as a reserved Naval Captain, whose bachelor seclusion was so rudely shattered by Gladys Hollands, playing the part of an American girl. The latter certainly deserves three or four asterisks for the manner in which she gave “the glad eye,” and one asterisk of admiration for the struggle she made to keep up an American accent. While on occasions she descended from Mae West to say Edith Evans, we can but admit that she “got her man,” and acted the rôle of a chaperon to the flighty Miss Fay Eaton played by Bunty Orme, who was forever pining for her “Bobo.”

Some of us were disappointed when Miss Charlotte Hopkinson disappeared down a hatchway and spent the night with some gyroscopical instruments in the engine room. Kathleen Hart certainly scored a winner in her portrayal of this elderly but determined spinster. Faithful to the end was Marine Ogg on “middle watch,” and whether with or without his boots, Teddy Hollands called forth several rounds of merriment, and assisted by Colin George (as Corporal Duckett) succeeding in compromising the most difficult situations. V. St. C. Tomalin acted with a natural assurance as Commander Baddely, and W. E. P. Loraine was a very indignant Admiral.

The rest of the caste were very able and included, K. G. Rugg (Capt. Randall), Joyce Fleming (Nancy Hewitt), Kathleen Curtis (Lady Hewitt) and Jack Duffy (an able Seaman).
Congratulations to the producer, E. Hart, who probably worked the hardest, and certainly obtained a good result.
FPR
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