See How They Run (play)

The play is set in 1943 (or shortly after the end of World War II in a subsequent rewrite) in the living room of the vicarage at the fictitious village of Merton-cum-Middlewick^[a] (merging the actual village names Merton and Middlewick, both in Oxfordshire).

Penelope Toop, a former actress, is now the wife of the local vicar, the Reverend Lionel Toop. The Toops employ Ida, a Cockney maid. Miss Skillon, a starchy churchgoer, arrives by bicycle to gossip with the vicar and to complain about the latest 'outrages' Penelope has caused. The vicar then leaves for the night, and an old friend of Penelope's, Lance-Corporal Clive Winton, stops by on a quick visit. To dodge army regulations, he changes from his uniform into Lionel's second-best suit, complete with a clerical "dog collar", in order to attend a production of Private Lives (a Noël Coward play in which he and Penelope appeared together in their acting days), while pretending to be the visiting vicar Arthur Humphrey, who is due to preach the Sunday sermon the next day.

Just before they set out, Penelope and Clive re-enact a fight scene from Private Lives and accidentally knock Miss Skillon (who has come back unannounced) unconscious. Miss Skillon, wrongly thinking she's seen Lionel fighting with Penelope, gets drunk on a bottle of cooking sherry and Ida hides her in the broom cupboard. Then Lionel, returning, is knocked silly by a German spy on the run, who takes the vicar's clothes as a disguise. To add to the confusion, both Penelope's uncle, the Bishop of Lax, and the real Humphrey unexpectedly turn up early. Chaos quickly ensues, culminating in a cycle of running figures and mistaken identities.

In the end, a military policeman comes in search of the spy, finding four suspects, Lionel, Clive, Humphrey and the German, all dressed as clergymen. No one can determine the identity of the spy (or anyone else for that matter), but the German is eventually foiled by quick work from Clive and Ida. The situation calms down as the sergeant leads the spy away and Humphrey leaves. Emerging from the closet, Miss Skillon joins Lionel and the Bishop in demanding an explanation. Penelope and Clive begin to explain in two-part harmony, getting up to the scene from Private Lives, when Miss Skillon again manages to catch a blow in the face. She falls back into Ida's arms as the curtain falls.

Under King's original title, Moon Madness, the play went on tour from January to April 1943, with director Henry Edwards as Clive, Rene Ray as Penelope, Eric Cowley as the Bishop of Lax and Esma Cannon as Ida.^[1] An ENSA tour later that year, directed by King himself, adjusted the title to Harvest Moon Madness.^[2]

The following year, the play, as See How They Run, was presented by Jack de Leon at the Q Theatre, close to London's Kew Bridge, as a Christmas entertainment opening on 21 December 1944. Directed by Henry Kendall, the cast included Beryl Mason and George Gee as Penelope and Clive, with George Bishop as the Bishop and Joan Hickson as Ida.^[3] The production then transferred to the West End, opening at the Comedy Theatre to rave reviews on 4 January 1945. Hickson left the cast that same month and was replaced by the original Ida, Esma Cannon.

The West End opening night was not without perils. Three German 'doodle-bugs' (V-1 flying bombs) exploded nearby. The audience remained in their seats until after the play was over, but Gee complained at the cast party that all three bombs went off just as he was speaking his funniest lines.^[4]

The play ran for 18 months at the Comedy, notching up 589 performances and closing on 18 May 1946.^[5]

• In the original, Clive is an English actor and former co-star of Penelope's, now conscripted into the British army; in a later rewrite, he's in the US Army.
• In the original, the prisoner is a German escapee from the local POW camp; in the rewrite, he's a captured Russian spy escaping from the nearby American base.
• In the original, Penelope speaks in RP British English; in the rewrite, she becomes an American.

• "The only other bishop's niece I know is in the chorus at the Windmill."
• "Darling, a woman with a bottom like that could say anything."
• "Sergeant, arrest most of these people."
• "How about The Wreck of the Hesperus?" "She's gone back to the cupboard."
• "You can't shoot me! I have diabetes!" (film version)

The play was made into a film in 1955, directed by Leslie Arliss and starring Ronald Shiner as Clive (renamed Wally), Greta Gynt as Penelope, James Hayter as the Bishop and Dora Bryan as Ida. Arliss collaborated on the screenplay with Philip King.

King subsequently revived several of his See How They Run characters in other plays. Pools Paradise (1960) includes Penelope and Lionel Toop, the Bishop of Lax, Ida, Miss Skillon and the Reverend Arthur Humphrey; the only other character is Willie Briggs, who is referred to but not seen in See How They Run. (The West End production of this play was directed by Henry Kendall, director of the first London production of See How They Run. As well as directing Pools Paradise, he also played the Bishop and cast Joan Sanderson as Miss Skillon again.)^[6] A later play, I'll Get My Man (1966), features both the Bishop of Lax and Reverend Arthur Humphrey. King himself played the Bishop in this play's Bristol Old Vic premiere.^[7]