Breath of Spring

The English actor Peter Coke began writing plays as a sideline. He began in 1954 co-writing with Mabel L Tyrell first The Fall of a Sparrow, followed in 1955 by a comedy entitled The Isle of Umbrellas, about weather control.^[1] Breath of Spring was his second play as sole author.^[1] The title refers to a particularly rare and expensive type of mink fur with a pale blue-grey colour.^[2]

After a pre-London tour, the play opened on 26 March 1958, at the Cambridge Theatre and then ran from September at the Duke of York's, a total of 430 performances.^[3] The original cast was:

• Nanette Parry – Hazel Hughes
• Brigadier Albert Rayne – Michael Shepley
• Lily Thompson – Joan Sims (Sheila Hancock from September^[4])
• Alice, Lady Miller – Mary Merrall
• Dame Beatrice Appleby – Athene Seyler
• Elizabeth Hatfield – Elspeth Duxbury
• Pape – Antony Baird
• Kemp – David Chivers

The producer was Michael Codron and the director Allan Davis. Designs were by Oliver Messel.^[5]

Dame Beatrice Appleby rents out rooms in her large house to various ageing residents including a retired army officer, an upper-class widow, a ceramics expert and an elocution teacher. Dame Beatrice's maid, Lily, has served a prison sentence for stealing furs, and on impulse relapses and steals a fur stole from a neighbour's residence as a present for her employer. Dame Beatrice insists that the fur be restored to its owner but without exposing Lily as the thief. The Times summarised this point of the plot:

The conspirators so enjoy their exploit in returning the stole that resuming their humdrum everyday existence seems unappealingly dull and it occurs to them that stealing furs from rich people and giving the proceeds to the poor would be a noble and stimulating activity.

They pursue the plan, with increasing success, running the risk of being caught and eventually they narrowly avoid detection by the police. When Lily discovers what her employer and associates have been up to she makes them promise to stop stealing furs. But Dame Beatrice and her colleagues have not promised to stop stealing anything apart from furs, and the play ends with the possibility of their turning their attentions to other kinds of theft.

The play was given a friendly reception by reviewers. The Stage praised its "excellent twists and turns, with bright, pithy dialogue, excellent characterisation of amiable eccentricity, and just the right blending of the possible with the preposterous".^[6] In The Manchester Guardian, Philip Hope-Wallace called it "an inventive farce, well acted … a highly enjoyable piece of Kensington farcical comedy, in a cleverly inventive production by Allan Davies and it is banged across, brandished at us and slapped home with joy by a cast headed by Athene Seyler in tearing good form".^[7]

Anna Russell headed the cast for a production that toured Australia and New Zealand 1969.^[8]

The play was adapted for the cinema under the title Make Mine Mink in 1960. Seyler recreated her stage role as Dame Beatrice; Duxbury was the other member of the original cast seen in the film. Also in the cast were Terry-Thomas and Hattie Jacques.^[9]

Under the title 70, Girls, 70 the play was adapted as a musical in 1971 with lyrics by Fred Ebb and music by John Kander. The original Broadway cast starred Mildred Natwick, Hans Conried, Lillian Roth and Lillian Hayman.^[10] A Chichester Festival production, transferring to the West End in 1991, starred Dora Bryan.^[11]

In 1963 Seyler starred in a sequel by Coke called Midsummer Mink. Hughes and Duxbury returned from the 1958 cast, joined by Eric Barker and Joyce Carey.^[12]