by SAM AND BELLA SPEWACK
Goodwood Theatre 166a Goodwood Road, Goodwood
POSTPONED TO 2021
It’s Christmas Eve, 1910, in French Guiana, where the temperature has dropped to a mild 104 degrees.
Three Devil’s Island “lifers”, Joseph, Jules and Albert – two murderers and an embezzler – are on a work detail, repairing the roof of kindly, but inept storekeeper, Felix Dulay, his wife and daughter. Felix manages the store for his nasty-minded, rich cousin, Gaston Lemare. Panic strikes when Gaston arrives unexpectedly, from France, demanding to examine Felix’s books, and threatening the family with eviction if the books don’t balance. Accompanying him is his equally arrogant nephew, Paul, loved by Felix’s daughter, but now jilting her for a Parisian heiress.
Appalled by the injustice, the three Devil’s Island “angels” decide to rescue the family. So – with the aid of Joseph’s “accounting” skills, and Albert’s pet snake, Adolphe – they set about solving the family’s problems.
Sam and Bella Spewack’s wickedly funny adaptation of French playwright Albert Husson’s 1952 La Cuisine des Anges was a stage hit in New York and London. It was successfully filmed in 1955, as We’re No Angels, starring Humphrey Bogart (in one of his rare comedic roles), Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray as the three “angels”.