A Cup of Kindness (play)

A Cup of Kindness is a farce by the English playwright Ben Travers. It was first given at the Aldwych Theatre, London, the sixth in the series of twelve Aldwych farces presented by the actor-manager Tom Walls at the theatre between 1923 and 1933. Several of the actors formed a regular core cast for the Aldwych farces. The play depicts the feud between two suburban families.

The piece opened on 24 May 1929 and ran for 291 performances. Travers made a film adaptation, which Walls directed in 1934, with some of the leading members of the stage cast reprising their roles.

The actor-manager Tom Walls produced the series of Aldwych farces, nearly all written by Ben Travers, starring Walls and his co-star Ralph Lynn, who specialised in playing "silly ass" characters. Walls assembled a regular company of actors to fill the supporting roles, including Robertson Hare, who played a figure of put-upon respectability; Mary Brough in eccentric old lady roles; Ethel Coleridge as the severe voice of authority; Winifred Shotter as the sprightly young female lead; and the saturnine Gordon James.

Walls and his team had already enjoyed five substantial hits at the Aldwych, with It Pays to Advertise (1923), which had run for 598 performances; A Cuckoo in the Nest (1925, 376 performances); Rookery Nook (1926, 409 performances); Thark (1927, 401 performances); and Plunder (1928, 344 performances). All except the first of them were written by Ben Travers. The earlier Travers farces had depicted upper or upper-middle class characters and country houses. For A Cup of Kindness, he turned his attention to middle class suburban life and petty snobbery. Each of the regular members of the team was generally given the same sort of part in the various new plays, but in this one Coleridge played a maid – a grumbling, kindly factotum – rather than her usual bossy authority-figures.

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