Cover of programme for the Blackpool stage show.

Thames Television's hit 70s Service sitcom Get Some In! had two summer season stage show adaptations. 

Whilst focusing on the stage adaptations I'll briefly overview the TV show. Get Some In! ran for 5 series in just three years between 1975 and 1978 written by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey who were simultaneously writing The Good Life between the same years. A period sitcom about a bunch of National Service recruits in the RAF in 1955, taking inspiration from Granada's then 50s contemporary sitcom The Army Game and hoping for some of the period success of Dad's Army. It starred Tony Selby as Corporal Marsh, the unlikeable bullying trainer of the raw recruits, referred to as 'erks', at (the fictional) RAF Skelton. The recruits are led by Teddy Boy Jakey Smith (Robert Lindsay) and include well mannered grammar boy Ken "Poofhouse" Richardson (David Janson), wet innocent vicars' son Matthew "Christopher Robin" Lilley (Gerard Ryder), and cynical pessimistic Glaswegian Bruce "Jockstrap" Leckie (Brian Pettifer). As the series progressed it went through some changes; for Series 3 they moved to (the also fictional) RAF Midham in Lancashire next to a WAAF station allowing more romantic plots and sees the lads training to become RAF hospital ward orderlies and medics and after a posting to Malta the final fifth series in 1978 was set at (the fictional) RAF Hospital Druidswater in England. Series 5 saw the biggest change because Jakey Smith had to be recast. Robert Lindsay had been cast in his own sitcom, Citizen Smith, in 1977 and was unavailable, so the character of Jakey was recast with Karl Howman taking over for 1978.

The series saw two summer season stage shows (or, more correctly, two productions of the same stage show), the first in 1977 at the Princess Theatre, Torquay with Robert Lindsay still as Jakey. The same play was then remounted as the summer season play at the Winter Gardens, Blackpool in 1978, this time with Karl Howman as Jakey as per Series 5 that year. I'll cover both productions here.

​

The shows were produced by Bernard Delfont, who had plenty of experience in this field, having produced the other National Service sitcom stage adaptation for The Army Game in Blackpool 18 years earlier in 1959, the first of the TV sitcom to stage adaptations as well as plenty of others since such as The Rag Trade in 1962.

Announced in March 1977, the stage play was written by the TV shows' writers, Esmonde & Larby, and opened at the Princess Theatre, Torquay on 17th June 1977, a month after the cast had finished recording Series 4, which started broadcasting the day before opening night on 16th June. Usually this sort of summer season play for Torquay would have been held at the Pavilion Theatre, but that theatre shut down in 1976 when the council sold it to Rank EMI to convert into a cabaret room. The Princess Theatre in Torquay and The Festival Theatre in Paignton usually put on variety shows through the summer season rather than plays. 

None of the newspaper reviews go into much detail about the plays' plot other than to say that four chorus girls end up stranded at the barracks and there's some sort of NAAFI rip-off. A lot of the action is set in an old ammunition store. 

From the TV series the main leads all appear at Torquay; Tony Selby as Corporal Marsh, Robert Lindsay as Jakey Smith, David Janson as Ken Richardson, Gerard Ryder as Matthew Lilley and Brian Pettifer as Bruce Leckie.

Corporal Marsh's wife Alice also appears but not played by the TV actress. On TV Lori Wells was Alice but at Torquay Alice Marsh is played by Lesley Daine. 

I suspect there may have been at least some reuse of TV plots in the stage play as there are two characters in the play that appeared in Series 1 Episode 6, Picket Detail, in which Alfred Marks guest starred as the drunk Sergeant Dobson that Marsh and the boys cover for when there's an inspection by senior officers. Those officers were Air Commodore Savage (Bernard Archard), a one time character, and Flight-Lieutenant Grant (David Quilter) who appears in a couple of episodes. Both Air Commodore Savage and Flight-Lieutenant Grant are in the play although only David Quilter from the TV series reprised his role, Air Commodore Savage was played by John Pennington at Torquay. There's also a recruit in the play called Albie who wasn't in the TV series, played by Ron Welling at Torquay.

The four chorus girls who end up stranded at the airbase are Doreen, Eileen, Noreen and Maureen, played respectively by Jo Thomas, Tricia Walsh, Ysanne Usherwood and the best known face, Linda Regan, future Hi-di-Hi! star.

In the week before the play opened at the Princess Theatre, Torquay on 16th June 1977 local news cameras turned up to record a lovely promo piece outside the Princess theatre with Corporal Marsh drilling the main cast in uniform followed by Selby being briefly interviewed and at the end the four girls coming on in bikinis despite the less than stellar summer weather, whilst locals and holidaymakers watch on. This 6 minute segment can be watched in the video below.

The show played twice nightly Monday - Saturday at 18:00 and 20:30 until 10th September 1977 for a total of 183 performances. Unusually for such a relatively long running show with a large cast it was reported that not one cast member whether starring or supporting missed a single performance throughout. The show did very well although wasn't the biggest hit of Torbay that summer. By September it was reported that 100,000 people had been through the doors at the Princess to see Get Some In!, beating the audience for the previous years' Larry Grayson show at the same theatre. But across Torbay at the Festival Theatre, Paignton 50s/60s rock n' roll star Tommy Steele was starring in The Tommy Steel Show which had made over £56,000 from 34,430 visitors in just two weeks in September breaking box office records for Torbay theatres whilst Get Some In! had been running for 3 months.

Nonetheless Get Some In! was a success and EMI, busy fitting out the nearby Pavilion Theatre, thought it worth buying it up for their next years' summer season in Blackpool having done the Are You Being Served? play there the previous year, 1976. EMI confirmed Get Some In! for Blackpool 2 months later in November 1977. Around this time there was also strong indication due to the success that a feature film was going to be made of Get Some In! This would likely have also been made by EMI who had also put on the Are You Being Served? stage play at the Winter Gardens, Blackpool in 1976 which had been adapted into the AYBS? feature film in 1977 also by EMI. I suspect this is why the Get Some In! film ultimately wasn't made of the EMI Blackpool show in 1978 as the AYBS? film wasn't as successful as hoped and the Get Some In! stage play the next year didn't make the impressive numbers to warrant another film chance.  A shame as a film would have been nice and although not top tier I'm rather fond of the AYBS? movie.

By this time, Tony Selby was getting tired of Corporal Marsh anyway and was concerned with typecasting. Prior to Get Some In! he'd found regular employment in lots of one-off plays but once Marsh was established a lot of other work dried up and he was only getting offered Marsh-like clone roles. He stopped making personal appearance in-character jobs as Marsh in uniform outside of the TV show to not get stuck with that image but the writing was on the wall for the show, especially once Lindsay dropped out and having already worked hard through twice a night performances in Torquay it was clear to Selby that Series 5 followed by the booked Blackpool season would be the end for his time as Marsh. Torquay had been fun at first but 3 months in doing twice nightly you're just going through the motions. As Selby pointed out in a newspaper interview before he even arrived in Blackpool, at least with TV you're doing a different story every week but repeating the same thing twice nightly over 3 months loses its appeal. Not helping of course that he's repeating the exact same play the second year not a new one! 

The fifth and final TV series with Karl Howman replacing Robert Lindsay as Jakey Smith ran from 6th April till 18th May 1978 and the Blackpool season at the Winter Gardens opened just over a month later on 29th June 1978 with Karl Howman continuing as Jakey. Otherwise the main cast comprised the TV and Torquay stars of Selby, Janson, Ryder and Pettifer.

Both stage productions were directed by Michael Mills, the former BBC Head of Comedy who moved to Thames in 1975 and produced the TV series of Get Some In! for its whole run.

However, although the same play as before there was change in cast for most of the supporting characters. Corporal Marsh's wife Alice who was played by Lori Wells on TV and Lesley Daine at Torquay was played by Virginia Drinkwater at Blackpool. Air Commodore Savage played by Bernard Archard on TV once and by John Pennington at Torquay was played by Cyril Appleton at Blackpool. Flight-Lieutenant Grant who was played by David Quilter on TV and at Torquay was now played by Anthony Verner at Blackpool. The new character of Albie played by Ron Welling at Torquay was now played by familiar TV comic support Derek Deadman who usually played idiots like Ringo in Never The Twain. Derek Deadman had actually appeared in two TV episodes of Get Some In! as well but as a different character called Rankin. Of the four chorus girls suddenly billeted at the camp only Jo Thomas returned from the Torquay run as Doreen, the other three being recast and now played by Pam Cunningham (Eileen), Trudy Howson (Maureen) and Anne Sedgwick (Noreen).

Otherwise it was as before at Torquay and had another successful if not outstanding run, lasting a month longer than the previous year when it closed on 7th October 1978, bringing to an end the Get Some In! story. Although very popular in its time unlike a lot of its hit 70s contemporaries Get Some In! never got the repeats it deserved on terrestrial television to become a perennial classic like Dad's Army or Are You Being Served? although Australia screened it in the early 80s. The series did eventually appear on UK Gold and now often gets an airing on Forces TV and the complete series was issued on DVD by Network but it was unfairly neglected for many years. Rather typical of ITV where they have to consider lesser ad revenue from repeating old stuff. Had it been a BBC sitcom it probably would have seen repeats through the 80s and 90s. 

I only have the programme for the second year at Blackpool, no hand flyer and nothing but an advert page for Torquay but I do also have a signed page of the main cast signed on 27th June 1978, two days before it opened at Blackpool likely during final rehearsals, by David Janson, Brian Pettifer, Tony Selby, Karl Howman and Gerard Ryder.