ON STAGE : THE PRAYING MANTIS 1954

Today in 1954, Joan was beginning a run at Her Majesty's Theatre,  Brighton in the play "The Praying Mantis", which had been a success at the Q Theatre in London. The play described as "A Naughty Comedy" also starred Elwyn Brook Jones who had co-starred with Joan in the 1952 film "Judgment Deferred"..
A review of the play in the local Brighton newspaper..

" A man-eater in the palace! Miss Joan Collins, who has a smouldering kind of beauty - all mascara, menace and impassioned pout, here indulges in an evening's hearty man-eating. For the exotic Miss Collins is very much a femme fatale, with more than a hint of those sultry sirens of the silent screen, spinning their webs of amorous enticement. Here we have another variation and a ruthless one, of the local girl making good, through being bad. For this girl from a fishing village climbs ever upwards, towards a throne upon a stairway of deposed or slaughtered lovers! And I must say that Miss Collins does it with relish. This is an out and out barrage of sex appeal and she deploys her charms with such an innate sense of comedy, that it makes for an agreeably amusing evening. It is Miss Collin's evening and if you think much of her, here you will get much of her and you wont be disappointed!