Information about the play:

This play was first performed at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway in 1954 and has been presented in theatres all over the world ever since. A production at the Theatre Royal, Brighton in 2004, starring the legendary Joan Collins in the leading role, was seen by this production's director, Peter Smith, who felt it had to be seen and enjoyed in the Hawkesbury.

The play was adapted by Alan Melville from a highly successful French play called: Les Enfants d'Edouard (Edward's Children) by Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon. It was originally set in Scotland and there were lots of jokes about kilts and caber-tossing. 

Melville described the play as a highly amoral romp which touched lightly on the shocking (for those days) subject of illegitimacy and so he had to move the setting back across the Channel to Paris, where for the English, anything risque was always more permissible.

The play belongs to a tradition of classical farce stretching back to Feydeau which celebrates, on stage, bourgeois families and their foibles especially for audiences of the identical class. This tradition was notably satarised by the celebrated movie in the 1970's: Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie.

Dear Charles has proved itself a genuine stayer with no ulterior motive other than to charm and amuse us and provide us with some light and lightness in the midst of the heavy gloom that constantly enters our lives via the daily news. One should not, however, entirely overlook some worthwhile lessons on tolerance and non-judgemental behaviour to be learned from the play.