Rookery Nook

The playwriting career of Ben Travers (1886-1980) was one of the longest and most successful in the history of theatre. After false starts in his family’s provisioning business and in publishing, and after service as a flying instructor during World War I, Travers pursued his dream of theatrical success by writing some comic novels and adapting them for the stage. While the first of these, The Dippers (1922), enjoyed some modest success, the second struck gold – though in a roundabout way.

The rights to Travers’ second play, A Cuckoo in the Nest, were originally optioned by a minor West End producer and later sold to a company specializing in farce at the Aldwych Theatre. Cuckoo opened to popular acclaim in July 1925 and ran almost a year. The Aldwych management quickly asked Travers for another farce, then another, then another. In all, there were nine of these Aldwych farces in nine years, the most popular of which were Cuckoo, Rookery Nook (1926), Thark (1927) and Plunder (1928). They had lengthy runs – almost 2700 performances in all – and spawned multiple touring companies. They made stars of actor- manager Tom Walls and regular cast members Ralph Lynn, Mary Brough, and Robertson Hare, and they quickly became staples of regional professional and amateur companies throughout the English-speaking world.

Travers made a successful shift into screenwriting in the 1930s, while occasionally writing more stage farces such as Banana Ridge (1938), Spotted Dick (1939), and Outrageous Fortune (1947). In 1976 – his ninetieth year – and after decades of relative obscurity, Travers enjoyed his best-ever year in the theatre, with three plays running simultaneously in the West End: a new farce The Bed Before Yesterday (starring Joan Plowright), a commercial revival of Banana Ridge (starring Robert Morley), and a revival of Plunder at the Old Vic and the new National Theatre. Travers revelled in his surprising resurgence, and was honoured with the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

In an obituary in 1980, the London Times noted: “[Farce] can be one of the happiest of theatrical forms. It is also among the most difficult to write. Ben Travers, undeniably, was the twentieth century’s chief practitioner.”