Many thanks to the North East Wales Archives, Ruthin Branch and the Meredith Edwards Papers collection for this transcript from The Nottingham Evening Post. Thanks also to Oliver Houston for requesting access.
October 2, 1956
From Round the Theatres:
Nottingham has an ideal opportunity to get a preview of a forthcoming London success, it seems, now that the new comedy “Your Loving Wife” has arrived this week at the Theatre Royal.
The piece varies in humour from broad farce to the more sophisticated tilts at the richer American way of life as the wives of tyrannical brothers discuss the plight of a mutual friend, recently bereaved when her husband fell from a window. They do not inquire into the delicate question of “Did he fall or was he pushed?” Instead, they envy her celebration trip to Europe and the gondola she brought back from Venice and made into a four-poster bed.
Widowhood certainly seems an attractive proposition, here, being infinitely preferable to receiving alimony without touching the capital.
Hermione Baddeley takes the star role as the determined merry widow-to-be. Deliciously funny as she is while at her husband’s beck and call, she calls him “lover,” at the same time calculating hher chances of getting rid of him. Being at heart a friendly soul, she makes no bones about giving her friend a helping hand by “beaning” her brother-in-law with an enormous leg of lamb and disposing of the weapon by giving it to the police for supper.
There is plenty of snap and sparkle when Miss Baddeley is on the stage, which is most of the time, but she could not ask for better support than that from Meredith Edwards, who doubles the parts of the two brothers. As husband No.1 he sticks to his keep-fit routine, wandering round the house in a thermostatically-controlled jacket, being shaken up and down on a mechanical horse and sweating in a Turkish bath.
As husband No.2 he trails miserably from bedroom to bathroom with oyster poisoning (guess how he got that). And when he hears of his brother’s demise he mutters darkly of “gang warfare,” while all the time the “gang” are sitting primly on the sofa.
Agnes Lauchlan, as the successful widow, commiserates with her companion when the doctor saves him with a stomach pump, and Joyce Barbour has a word to offer about doing the job with tiger’s whiskers chopped up and sprinkled on food. Both parts are, like the leg of lamb, done well.
Minor roles are taken by Dermot Palmer, Henry Scarsdale, John Marquand, Peter Bailey and John Mytton. Roald Dahl’s play could do with a little tightening and a firm adjustment to a weak ending which gives a feeling of anti-climax to Gerald Savory’s production of this neat entertainment.