Post-Whitehall Farces

Abstract

Brian Rix, having failed to secure the lease of the Whitehall, went on tour in 1966 with Chase Me Comrade! and another farce by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton, Bang, Bang, Beirut, subsequently re-titled Stand By Your Bedouin. Rix starred in Chase Me Comrade!, Dickie Henderson in Bang, Bang, Beirut. Rix had taken, as he puts it, ‘my first tentative steps towards experimenting with a repertoire’ (p. 209). Back in London, he arranged with John Hallett, Managing Director of the Garrick, to open a repertory season of farces there in March 1967. He intended to open with Stand By Your Bedouin, then alternate this with Uproar in the House, by Anthony Marriott and Alastair Foot, and finally add a third play, Let Sleeping Wives Lie, by Harold Brooke and Kay Bannerman. He had also arranged for excerpts of the plays to be televised by the BBC. But business was bad, and the season was a failure; the public, according to Rix, seemed to think either that he was ‘doing three one-act plays’, or that ‘the plays were flopping and coming off after one week.’ The public associated Rix with the Whitehall, ‘and merely wanted to know there was one funny play on in one theatre’ (p. 209). As a result, Rix reverted to one play, Let Sleeping Wives Lie, transferred Uproar in the House to the Whitehall under another management, and took off Stand by Your Bedouin altogether.