The Theatre: Small Boys in Bed

The English theatre knows which side its war bread is buttered on: the bright side. But it doesn't keep mum about the war; it kids it. It makes air-raid shelters and blackouts as good for laughs as mothers-in-law and pratt falls. In the opening number of Lights Up, a new Charles Cochran revue which has struck gold in the provinces and is soon to open in London, chorines wear brassieres resembling ration cards, and preserve their modesty by dangling gas-mask containers.

Wow song of the show is sung by Doris Hare, dressed as a dirty-faced Cockney ragamuffin who has been shipped to the country:

I didn't really never ought 'ave went;

In London I was really quite content.

I wouldn't have been windy with the planes up overhead,

Talk of blinkin' aeroplanes, you should have heard what father said,

They couldn't hit the Forth bridge let alone small boys in bed,

No, I didn't really never ought 'ave went.

But war is forgotten in A day in the Life of a Mr. Cochran's Young Lady, where the chorines, after telling about a long, hard day, complain:

When we go to bed all we take is a book,

Our life is nothing but work.