Many thanks to the North East Wales Archives, Ruthin Branch and the Meredith Edwards Papers collection for this transcript from The Birmingham Gazette. Thanks also to Oliver Houston for requesting access.
October 16, 1956
by Neville Gaffin
A TEXT-BOOK FOR WOULD-BE WIDOWS
Husbands, take warning. If your wife is bored and frustrated by you and suburbia, keep her away from “Your Loving Wife” at the Theatre Royal this week.
This new comedy, which starts so brightly but then lamentably loses its touch, is an elementary text-book in murderous ideas for repressed, middle-aged women.
With its two guaranteed diploma courses – the simple out-of-the-window and stuck-in-the-elevator techniques – it could be subtitled “School for Widows.”
Take note, though, that the more subtle Borgia methods, the bad oyster and tiger whisker concoctions, don’t succeed.
Author Ronald [sic] Dahl works his theme relentlessly, but the comedy stumbles when his invention fumbles, and the result is considerably less than another “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
Hermione Baddeley’s dry, rough-edged humour bites through the humour in her part with wicked effect.
Agnes Lauchlan, as the other potential widow, twitters along merrily, and Joyce Barbour is joyfully abandoned as the graduate practitioner revelling in freedom, minks, diamonds and cruises.
Meredith Edwards plays the twin brother victims and clearly demonstrates why they are not worth saving.
One fusses with several toupees, a heating jacket, a portable Turkish bath and a mechanical exercise horse. He deserves to go.
The other is a cantankerous glutton with a paunch and no hair. He isn’t worth worrying about, either.
But the play is – if director Gerald (“George and Margaret”) Savory can give purpose and cohesion to the weakness.