AustLit

Mum's the Word is a musical adaptation The Chaperone, a comedy/farce that premiered in London in early 1914, running for a respectable eight months. The star of that production, Ethel Dane (wife of Cyril Keightley) was engaged by Beaumont Smith and Leslie Hoskins to lead their 'Glad Eye' company during its 1914-15 Australian tour. She went on to play the lead female parts in both the The Chaperone and Mum's the Word.

The Sydney Morning Herald theatre critic writes of this musical version: It is 'in a somewhat altered garb and a new title, which is scarcely an improvement upon the original…. Judging by the result on Saturday evening the innovation is likely to prove acceptable, for there was a good house and the audience was generous in its appreciation. There is no doubt as to the immense amount of fun which the complex happenings in Mum's the Word render inevitable, and the house rippled throughout with amusement at the frantic efforts of the giddy Christopher Pottinger, M.P., to escape the consequences of a brief intrigue with Rosamond Gaythorne, the fascinating actress who meets him by appointment at a cabaret in London known as The Royal' (6 September 1915, p.4).