A Bit of a Test

A Bit of a Test is a farce by Ben Travers. It was the last, and least successful, of the series of twelve Aldwych farces that ran in uninterrupted succession at the Aldwych Theatre in London from 1923 to 1933. The play depicts the efforts of the England cricket captain to keep his star batsman out of trouble during an Ashes series in Australia.

The piece opened on 30 January 1933 and ran until 3 June, a total of 142 performances.

The actor-manager Tom Walls had produced, directed and co-starred in nine Aldwych farces between 1923 and 1932. By the early 1930s his interest was moving from theatre to cinema, and though he produced the last three farces in the series he did not appear in them. Ben Travers, who had written all but three of the series, made no attempt to write Walls-type roles for another actor to play. Ralph Lynn, who had co-starred with Walls in the earlier farces, became the sole star for Dirty Work, Fifty-Fifty and A Bit of a Test. By 1933 some regular members of the Aldwych company had left, but there remained Lynn, in his customary "silly ass" roles, Robertson Hare, as a figure of put-upon respectability; Mary Brough as a good-hearted battle-axe; and the saturnine Gordon James.

Travers was a passionate devotee of cricket. In the wake of the controversial "Bodyline" series in Australia, he thought the general public would welcome a farce about the game. The British public was reasonably receptive, but the Australian public was not. Touring productions of the Aldwych farces had generally done well in Australia, but A Bit of a Test closed within four nights of opening in Melbourne. Travers commented that the Australians had a faulty sense of humour about themselves, particularly where cricket was concerned. "A sense of humor might have enabled the cricket controversy to have been avoided."

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