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As You Are (play)

1939 play

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ131008469 ↗
Source-derived summary

As You Are is a 1939 comedy play by Hugh Mills and Wells Root. It premiered at Richmond Theatre under the title Stay Just As You Are during the early months of the Second World War. It then transferred to London's West End where it ran for 74 performances from 12 January 1940 to 16 March 1940, initially at the Aldwych Theatre before moving to the Whitehall Theatre. The West End cast included Diana Churchill, Morland Graham, Edward Chapman, Hugh Dempster, Elliott Mason, Muriel George, O.B. Clarence, Vincent Holman, Charles Mortimer and Joan Hickson. A review in the New Statesman considered that despite its complicated plot, the play had many of the "right ingredients" for a successful comedy.

Adaptation

It was adapted for the 1941 film Turned Out Nice Again starring George Formby. His last film made for Ealing Studios it also co-starred Peggy Bryan and Mackenzie Ward, as well as several members of the stage cast including Mason and Chapman. In 1958 it was adapted into an Australian television film As You Are.

References

Bibliography

Goble, Alan. The Complete Index to Literary Sources in Film.

Editorial summary

“As You Are (play)” enters the record as 1939 play. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what play can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939, 1940, 1941, 1958—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around play.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“As You Are (play)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, play provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q131008469. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1940, 1941 and 1958.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “As You Are (play)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow As You Are (play) primary sources, As You Are (play) archive and play research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “As You Are (play)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “As You Are (play)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.