Lock Up Your Daughters, October 1979

LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS, which Stevenage’s own Lytton Players bring to the Gordon Craig for the week commencing Monday 1 October, as the first of their autumn productions (Gilbert & Sullivan’s Princess Ida follows each month), is the engagingly bawdy musical romp by Bernard Miles, Laurie Johnson and Lionel Bart which opened the Mermaid Theatre back in the late Fifties and subsequently ran for two years in the West End.  Loosely based on Fielding’s high-camp Restoration comedy Rape Upon Rape, the play brings to hilarious life the corruptly lecherous Mr. Justice Squeezum and his rapacious wife, their wide-eyed but not-so-innocent daughter Hilaret and her gallery of motley suitors, and a whole array of divertingly colourful 18th century Londoners.  The fun is fast and frothy, the tunes are memorably hummable, and the whole saucy entertainment offers a great evening out for anyone above the age of 12 or 13.  Victor White (responsible for last year’s outstanding farce, Mrs. Markham) directs, with Bob King as musical supremo.

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