Engaged (play)

Engaged (play)

Engaged is a three-act farcical comic play by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Haymarket Theatre on 3 October 1877, the same year as The Sorcerer, one of Gilbert's comic operas written with Arthur Sullivan, which was soon followed by the collaborators' great success in H.M.S. Pinafore. Engaged was well received on the London stage and then in New York City, where the first production of the play opened in February 1879. The work then enjoyed many revivals on both sides of the Atlantic and continues to be produced today.

Engaged has been W. S. Gilbert's most popular stage work aside from the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas. A New York Times review of an 1886 production of Engaged (dated February 24 of that year) noted that "the laughter was almost incessant." Makers wrote: "Engaged unquestionably the finest and funniest English comedy between Bulwer-Lytton's Money and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, (1895) which it directly inspired". Engaged may also have inspired George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man and Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests.

In 2007, a recording was released of a musical adaptation of the play, called Topsy Turvy Loves, using Gilbert and Sullivan music and cutting much of the dialogue, and an Equity Showcase production of the adaptation was mounted in October 2009 by the Wings Theatre Company in New York City.