A.A. Milne's 1921 play The Truth About Blayds is about to be revived at the Finborough Theatre in London. This is good news as Milne's plays for adults are rarely produced these days. The cast includes William Gaunt, presumably playing the Blayds of the title, an elderly, much-revered, poet; having played King Lear as well as sitcom patriarchs he ought to have the necessary gravitas.
Milne had a run of hit plays in Britain and America between the wars but Blayds, more serious in tone than most, did not receive the level of acclaim he thought it deserved, and it rankled: he dwelt upon its reception in his 1939 autobiography It's Too Late Now, his disappointment still keen almost twenty years after the event.
The problem, as he saw it, was that after the first act critics and audiences seemed to be expecting a different sort of play: