AustLit

Mum's the Word is a musical adaptation The Chaperone, a comedy/farce that premiered in London in early 1914, running for a respectable eight months. The star of that production, Ethel Dane (wife of Cyril Keightley) was engaged by Beaumont Smith and Leslie Hoskins to lead their 'Glad Eye' company during its 1914-15 Australian tour. She went on to play the lead female parts in both the The Chaperone and Mum's the Word.

The Sydney Morning Herald theatre critic writes of this musical version: It is 'in a somewhat altered garb and a new title, which is scarcely an improvement upon the original…. Judging by the result on Saturday evening the innovation is likely to prove acceptable, for there was a good house and the audience was generous in its appreciation. There is no doubt as to the immense amount of fun which the complex happenings in Mum's the Word render inevitable, and the house rippled throughout with amusement at the frantic efforts of the giddy Christopher Pottinger, M.P., to escape the consequences of a brief intrigue with Rosamond Gaythorne, the fascinating actress who meets him by appointment at a cabaret in London known as The Royal' (6 September 1915, p.4).

The principal storyline concerns Dolly Gibbs, a spoilt rich girl who has run away and joined a theatre company so as to escape from Tommy Chester, a rich young ass who has been pestering her to marry him. Tommy tracks her down and they meet at the theatre, but only shortly before their respective parents arrive in hot pursuit. A secondary plot concerns the theatre company itself, and is said to spoof the American show business industry which manufactures mindless shows 'to meet the needs of its tired business men' (Age 20 December 1915, 9).

Stop Your Nonsense begins with the manager of the Highty Flighty Theatre (David Burlesko) telling the author of the play that is about to premiere that he has changed his mind and is now going in for vaudeville. "What about my beautiful play?" says the indignant playwright, Pinero Jones. "If it hadn't been for you I could have had it done by J. C. Williamson - or Harry Clay" (Theatre Magazine September 1915, p.12). The Bulletin's theatre critic proposes that what follows is not unlike the treatment a musical burlesque receives. It 'is generally understood to be the mere bleeding remnants of what its author originally produced. The nice new script is torn to pieces in rehearsal by stage staff and players; the mince is then mined and bombed after hours by author, producer and stage manager in collaboration; and finally the torn and teased and sundered thing is stuffed into a new sausage skin by all hands, including the musical director and the call boy' (19 August 1915, p.9).

[Source: Australian Variety Theatre Archive]