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Fifty-Fifty (play)


Fifty-Fifty is a farce by H. F. Maltby, adapted from a French original, Azaïs, by Louis Verneuil and Georges Berr. It was the penultimate work of the series of Aldwych farces that ran nearly continuously at the Aldwych Theatre in London from 1923 to 1933. The play centres on the sudden rise of an impoverished music teacher to become manager of a grand casino.

The piece opened on 5 September 1932 and ran until 21 January 1933, a total of 161 performances. A film adaptation was made in 1933 under the title Just My Luck.

Fifty-Fifty was the eleventh in the series of twelve Aldwych farces. The first four in the series, It Pays to Advertise, A Cuckoo in the Nest, Rookery Nook and Thark had long runs, averaging more than 400 performances each. Subsequent productions had been less outstandingly successful, and the decision of the producer, Tom Walls, not to appear in the previous play, Dirty Work had disappointed audiences who had relished his stage chemistry with his co-star Ralph Lynn.

Three of the familiar favourites in the Aldwych team took roles in the new production alongside Lynn: Robertson Hare, a figure of harassed respectability, Mary Brough, famous for her eccentric old ladies, and Winifred Shotter, the leading lady. The public had grown used to farces written specially for the company by Ben Travers, and critics noted that the parts in the new piece were not tailor-made for Hare and Brough as Travers's characters always were. The play had already been seen in London in Maltby's translation, in a production at the Strand Theatre in 1929. On that occasion it was given under the title Azaïs and was less anglicised than the version presented at the Aldwych. One member of the Strand cast was recruited for the Aldwych production, Clive Morton, who reprised his character, the Viscount de Langeais, though renamed La Coste.


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