See How They Run (play)

See How They Run
Poster for the recent London run
Written by	Philip King
Date premiered	1944 (Peterborough); 4 January 1945 (West End)
Original language	English
Genre	Farce
Setting	Rural England, 1943

See How They Run is an English comedy in three acts by Philip King. Its title is a line from the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice". It is considered a farce for its tense comic situations and headlong humour, heavily playing on mistaken identity, doors, and vicars. In 1955 it was adapted as a film starring Roland Culver.

King wrote the first act in 1942 under the title Moon Madness, with the final act completed in 1943. His play was first staged by Henry Kendall at the Peterborough Rep in 1944 prior to a British tour as an entertainment for the troops, under the auspices of ENSA.

Henry Kendall's production, re-cast and restaged, was then presented by producer Jack de Leon at his Q Theatre, close to Kew Bridge, as Christmas entertainment opening on 21 December 1944. It then transferred – with one change of cast – to the Comedy Theatre, opening to rave reviews on 4 January 1945.

The cast included Joan Hickson as the maid Ida (an actress new to comedy who had been acting at the Q Theatre since 1942) and starred Beryl Mason and George Gee as Penelope and Clive. It ran for 18 months at the Comedy, notching up 589 performances.

The West End opening night was not without its perils. Three 'doodle-bugs' (V-1 flying bombs) exploded nearby. No-one budged until after the play was over, but Gee complained at the cast party that all three went off just as he was speaking his funniest lines.

The play is set in 1943 for the original (or shortly after the end of World War II in the rewrite) in the living room of the vicarage at the fictitious village of Merton-cum-Middlewick (merging various actual village names, such as Merton and Middlewick, both in Oxfordshire, along with the old British usage of 'cum', meaning 'alongside' in the middle of a village name, as in Chorlton-cum-Hardy).