authority; the saturnine Gordon James as the "heavy"; and first Yvonne Arnaud, then Winifred Shotter, as the sprightly young female lead. The plays generally revolved around a series of preposterous incidents involving a misunderstanding, borrowed clothes and lost trousers, involving the worldly Walls character, the innocent yet cheeky Lynn, the hapless Hare, the beefy, domineering Brough, the lean, domineering Coleridge, and the pretty and slightly spicy Shotter, all played with earnest seriousness. The scripts incorporated and developed British low comedy styles, particularly "silly-asses, henpecked husbands, battleaxe mothers-in-law and lots of innocent misunderstandings." The farces proved popular, and touring casts were regularly sent to the provinces. Some touring players, such as William Daunt (1893–1938) who played the Ralph Lynn roles, made considerable personal successes in the 1920s playing Aldwych farces in the provinces. Lynn's younger brother Hastings Lynn, played his brother's roles in successful productions in Australia and New Zealand. Among the up-and-coming performers who appeared in Aldwych farces before becoming famous were Roger Livesey, Margot Grahame, and Norma Varden. After five years of extraordinary success, Walls' business partnership with Henson ended in September 1927 during the run of Thark, and from October, the Aldwych farces were presented by the firm of Tom Walls and Reginald Highley Ltd. By 1930, Walls was losing interest in the theatre, turning his attention to the cinema. He did not appear in the last three of the twelve Aldwych farces, which had disappointing runs. The last of them, A Bit of a Test in 1933, ran for 142 performances, compared with runs of more than 400 performances for some of the earlier productions. In 1952, three years after Walls's death, Lynn and Hare starred at the Aldwych in a new Travers farce, Wild Horses. It ran from 6 November 1952 to 11 April 1953. In the 1950s and early 1960s, a similar hit series of farces began at the Whitehall Theatre and came to be known as Whitehall farces. On stage The following table shows the opening and closing dates, and the number of performances given, in the original productions of the Aldwych farces. All were written by Ben Travers, except where otherwise shown: In film Most of the farces, as well as some other works by Travers, were filmed during the 1930s. The films featured many of the actors who had starred in the plays; Walls directed all the films except for Just My