About the Play:

The Happiest Days of Your Life is a full-length farce by John Dighton. The pupils and teachers of a girls' school are relocated to alternative accommodation as their own school has been a casualty of wartime bombing. Thanks to a bureaucratic mix-up, they wind up sharing the quarters of an isolated private boys' school in this much-loved British farce.

The Happiest Days of Your Life is set after World War II and tells the story of one school being forced to merge with another because its building was destroyed by enemy bombs. This delightful farce is about what happens when Hillary Hall College For Boys receives the news that they are to billet the pupils and teachers of St. Swithin's girls' school. Events are complicated as the boys' school is expecting a visit from the Governors, the girls' school a visit from parents – on the same day! The harried headmaster and headmistress, to keep the two sets of visitors apart and only show them what they are expecting to see. Naturally this results in chaos and confusion all round as the whole thing turns into a battle of the sexes with predictably hilarious consequences. Add in a militant caretaker and a pinch of romance and you have all the ingredients for a rip roaring farce. Eventually, the parents learn the truth and are about to remove their children when news arrives that a third school is to be amalgamated into theirs. They all join together to keep out these intruders. This delightful, whimsical show about the breaking down of barriers between the sexes is ideal for all groups.

The Happiest Days of Your Life premiered in 1948 at the Apollo Theatre in London and was turned into a very memorable film of the same title starring Margaret Rutherford and Alastair Sim. Revived to great acclaim by The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984, the play is regularly performed in regional repertory, high school, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 6 women, 7 men

What people say:

"The Happiest Days of Your Life is an utterly enjoyable post-war farce about boys and girls boarding schools forced to share the same quarters ... For all its outrageous puns and prim public school sexuality, the trifling 'Happiest Days' remains endearing." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

John Dighton (1909-1989) was a successful British playwright and screenwriter. He was born and grew up in Bearsden, near Glasgow. He studied at Glasgow University and moved to London, where he became a writer. Dighton wrote for the stage until 1936, when he made the transition to films. During much of the 1960s and '70s, he lived in California, where he taught screenwriting for a time. He returned to England permanently in the early 1980s.