Dick Whittington. A Pantomime Written & Produced by Members of the 85th Field Ambulance (3rd London) [Souvenir Edition].

Bookseller Notes

Dick Whittington, first performed by members of the 85th Field Ambulance in Salonika on Christmas night,1915, proved to be such a success that 28 further performances toured the region throughout January of 1916. As the author describes in his introduction, costumes and sets were improvised with great ingenuity: pyjamas serving for costumes, candles in cut-away jam tins for footlights and an Elizabethan ruffle cut and curled from obsolete army forms; the auditorium itself was dug out to provide a lower area for the audience and a hill for the stage, since all wood was needed for trench support. M. Lipton in 'The House that Tommy built', University of Queensland, UQeSpace, 2014, suggests that the show's popularity was partly due to the pantomime tradition of topical reference - in the guise of comedy, complaints regarding inadequate supplies, accommodation, leave, disease and recognition could finally be voiced. That this improvised production, together with further pantomimes (Aladdin and Bluebeard) performed by the 85th in the following years, was revived on the London stage between 1921 and 1931 indicates the degree of affection with which it was regarded.