Miss Harris in the New World (The Company of Fools) by Peter Maughan
A collection of theatrical misfits goes on tour across the Atlantic in this nostalgic post-war novel sure to delight fans of P. G. Wodehouse.
The Red Lion production of ‘Love and Miss Harris’ is booked to tour America, opening in Manhattan.
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On arrival the group finds that it’s not the Manhattan with the Great White Way of Broadway at its glittering heart, but the part between the Bowery and the East River, on the Lower East Side, in a vaudeville venue owned by a local mobster. And when members of a rival gang decide to disrupt the play, the action shifts from the theatre’s state to its auditorium…
Determined to fulfil the rest of their tour dates, the company heads west from New York. Try as they might to shake it off, trouble seems to follow them wherever they go.
My Review
This is a fun read about a troupe of eccentric British actors touring America with a play called Love and Miss Harris, shortly after the Second World War. The subject of the play is largely irrelevant – it’s the characters that are important. We first met the Red Lion Touring Company in London in Book One, after their East End theatre was bombed and they embarked on a tour of Britain instead.
There is also a side story about a man called Reuben Kramer, who having escaped from a high security prison for the criminally insane, is on the trail of leading man Jack Savage, so he can shoot and kill him. Reuben had murdered four people, and attempted to kill two more, one of which was Jack, who had got the better of him, something he will never forgive or forget. This was my favourite part of the book.
In the meantime, the troupe is travelling from town to town, city to city, having started in New York and visited such prestigious places as Carlston, Pennsylvania and New Littlehampton in Connecticut. Am I being sarcastic – I’ll leave you to decide. They travel in a no 9 red bus, plus a Rolls Royce, and these attract attention wherever they go, even if they are sometimes considered to be part of a circus sideshow. It’s all publicity after all! And we all know what they say about publicity.
Some of the people they meet along the way are interesting, some amorous, and some less friendly. I love the argument that Titus has with theatre manager Mr Potters at the end of the tour about whether Shakespeare wrote his own plays, or whether it was Sir Francis Bacon. Titus is incensed and makes his position known. And then the ‘ornamental’ sword comes out. Very theatrical.
There’s plenty of singing, flirting, carousing and alcohol involved, as well as a bit of ‘how’s yer father’ on the way, to use an East End colloquialism. So until we meet again, “Next stop Blighty!”
Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours
About the Author
Peter Maughan studied at the Actor’s Workshop in London, and worked as an actor in the UK and Ireland (in the heyday of Ardmore Studios).
He founded and ran a fringe theatre in Barnes, London and, living on a converted Thames sailing barge among a small colony of houseboats on the River Medway, wrote pilot film scripts as a freelance deep in the green shades of rural Kent.
He lives in a river valley in the Welsh Marches where he writes the Batch Magna novels.
Visit Peter’s website at http://www.batchmagna.com
