Cavalcade

About the show

It is nearly midnight. Robert and Jane Marryot are seeing in the New Year quietly together in their London house. Their happiness is clouded by the Boer War: Jane's brother is besieged in Mafeking, and Robert himself will shortly be going to South Africa. Robert and Jane invited their butler, Bridges, and his wife, Ellen, to join them. Bells, shouting, and sirens outside usher in the New Year, and Robert proposes a toast to 1900. Hearing her two boys stirring upstairs, Jane runs up to see after them, and her husband calls to her to bring them down to join the adults. A month later, a contingent of volunteers are leaving for the war. On the dockside Jane and Ellen are seeing off Robert and Bridges. As the men go aboard, Jane comforts Ellen, who is crying. A band strikes up "Soldiers of the Queen". The volunteers wave their farewells to the cheering crowd. The Marryot boys, Edward, aged twelve, and Joe, aged eight, are playing soldiers with a young friend, Edith Harris. She objects to being made to play "the Boers", and they begin to quarrel. The noise brings in their mothers. Joe throws a toy at Edith, and is sharply slapped by Jane, whose nerves are on edge with anxiety about her brother and her husband. Her state of mind is not helped by a barrel-organ outside, playing "Soldiers of the Queen" under the window. Margaret, Edith's mother, sends the organ-grinder away and proposes to take Jane to the theatre to take her mind off her worry. Jane and Margaret are in a stage-box, watching MirabeIle, the currently popular musical comedy. The plot is the usual froth, but the denouement is not reached: the theatre manager comes onstage to announce that Mafeking has been relieved. Joyous uproar breaks out; the audience claps and cheers and some begin to sing "Auld Lang Syne". The cook, Annie the parlourmaid, and Ellen's mother Mrs Snapper are preparing a special tea to greet Bridges on his return from the war. He comes in with Ellen, looking well, and kisses his little baby, Fanny. He tells them that he has bought a public house so that he and Ellen can work for themselves in future. The celebratory mood is dampened when Annie brings in a newspaper reporting that Queen Victoria is dying. This scene is all in mime. Robert and Jane are walking in Kensington Gardens with their children when they meet Margaret and Edith Harris. Everyone is in black, solemn and silent, following the Queen's death. On the balcony, Jane, Margaret, their children and the servants are watching Queen Victoria's funeral procession. Robert, who was awarded the Victoria Cross is walking in the procession, and Jane has some difficulty in making her boys suppress their excitement and pay due respect as the coffin passes. As the lights fade, Joe comments, "She must have been a very little lady ". Jane and Robert are attending a grand ball given by the Duchess of Churt. The Major-domo announces, "Sir Robert and Lady Marryot". Jane has brought her son Edward, now eighteen, to see Ellen in the flat above the public house. They have just finished tea, together with Flo and George, relations of the Bridges. Seven-year-old Fanny has been dancing to entertain them. Bridges enters, clearly drunk. Jane, dismayed, makes a tactful departure. Bridges starts to bully Fanny and is ejected from the room by George and Flo. After emerging from the pub, Bridges carries on up the road. He is knocked down and killed by a car. Edward Marryot is holding his twenty-first birthday party, with many smart young guests. Rose, an actress from the old Mirabelle production, proposes his health and sings the big waltz number from the show. A concert party of six "Uncles" is performing in a bandstand. Ellen and her family are there and Fanny wins a prize for a song and dance competition. They unexpectedly meet Margaret, Jane and Joe. Ellen tells them that she has kept on the pub since her husband's death and that Fanny is now at a dancing-school and determined to go on the stage. Edward has married Edith Harris, and they are on their honeymoon. They speculate blithely how long the initial bliss of marriage will last. As they walk off, she lifts her cloak from where it has been draped on the ship rail, revealing the name Titanic on a lifebelt. The lights fade into complete darkness; the orchestra plays "Nearer, My God, to Thee" very quietly. War has been declared. Robert and Joe are keen to join the army. Jane is horrified, and refuses to indulge in the jingoism she sees around her. Soldiers are seen endlessly marching. The orchestra plays songs of the First World War. Joe and Fanny – now a rising young actress – are dining in a West End restaurant. Joe is in army officer's uniform. He is on leave but is about to return to the Front. They discuss marriage, but she envisages opposition from his family, and bids him wait until he is back from the war for good. Jane sees Joe off at the railway station. Like many of the women on the platform she is distressed. Ellen visits Jane, having found out that Joe is emotionally involved with her daughter. The two mothers fall out: Ellen thinks Jane regards Fanny as beneath Joe socially. As Ellen is leaving, the maid brings in a telegram. Jane opens it and tells Ellen. "You needn't worry about Fanny and Joe any more, Ellen. He won't be able to come back at all, because he's dead." Surrounded by the frantic revelry of Armistice Night, Jane is walking, dazed, through Trafalgar Square. With tears streaming down her face, she cheers wildly and waves a rattle, while the band plays "Land of Hope and Glory ". Margaret and Jane, both now elderly, are sitting by the fire. Margaret leaves, after wishing a happy New Year to Jane and Robert, who has come in to drink a New Year toast with his wife. Jane drinks first to him and then to England: "The hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness, and peace again". Robert, Jane, Margaret, Ellen, and the full company are in a night club. At the piano, Fanny sings "Twentieth Century Blues", and after the song everyone dances. The lights fade, and a chaotic succession of images representative of life in 1929 is spotlighted. When the noise and confusion reach a climax the stage suddenly fades into darkness and silence. At the back a Union Jack glows through the darkness. The scene ends with the lights coming up on the massed company singing "God Save the King".