The happiest
days of your life
Our November
2001 was the gentle farce by John Dighton.
This was set in
the masters' common room of Hilary Hall School for Boys in the summer term just
after the Second World War had ended. The masters find out that St
Swithin's, a girls' school, is to be billeted upon them after a clerical error
at the Ministry of Devacuation. The staff try desperately to conceal the
fact that the boys and girls are housed together, but in vain, for some of the
parents find out. They are about to remove their offspring when a message
arrives: a third school is to share Hilary Hall. Against this common
enemy, both staff and parents unite to barricade the gates.
Some people
might have remembered this as a hilarious 1950's film starring Joyce Grenfield
as the love struck gym teacher, Alistair Sym and Margaret Rutherford as the
Heads of the respective establishments. The play itself has a very
different plot from the film, but our audience seemed to enjoy it greatly and
some older spectators told us how much it reminded them of thir own schooldays.
There was avery large cast and the two younger new recruits proved a real
revelation.
