The Happiest Days Of Your Life
By John Dighton
November 1969
Set in 1949, confusion reigns when St Swithin's Girls' School is accidentally billeted at Nutbourne College: a boys' school. The two heads, Wetherby Pond and Muriel Whitchurch, try to cope with the ensuing chaos, as the children and staff attempt to live in the newly cramped conditions (it being impossible to share dormitories or other facilities), and seek to prevent the children taking advantage of their new opportunities.
Additional humour is derived from the departure of the Nutbourne College domestic staff and their hurried (and not very effective) replacement with the St Swithin's School Home Economics class.
The main comedy is derived from the fact that the parents of the St Swithins girls would consider it improper for their daughters to be exposed to the rough mix of boys in Pond's school, and from the consequent need to conceal the fact that the girls are now sharing a school that's full of boys. Pond is offended at the suggestion that his boys are not suitable company for the young ladies of St Swithin's, but he needs to appease Miss Whitchurch to salvage his chances of an appointment to a prestigious all-boys school for which he is in the running, and which depends on his ability to prevent his current post presenting the appearance of a bear garden.
CAST
Ida Dann
Gwendolyn Barrett
Betty Murray
Neale Webb
Stephen Booth
Frank Hughes
Geoff Lovegrove
Verna James
Hilda Smith
Fred Jackson
Peter Taylor
Lesley Van Hoey Smith
David Ferguson
Small Running Title
CREW
DIRECTOR
ASSISTED BY
STAGE MANAGER
PROPS
PROMPTER
BUSINESS MANAGER
Arthur Thomas
Geoff Lovegrove
Geoff Lovegrove
Jennifer Dalton
Marlene Hopkins
Dorothy Beamish