The Fairy's Dilemma - Background

Background

The Fairy's Dilemma, "an original domestic pantomime in two acts", was W. S. Gilbert's first play produced since The Fortune Hunter in 1897. He had announced a retirement from the theatre after the poor reception of that play. In 1900, he wrote a story called "The Fairy's Dilemma", published in the Christmas number of The Graphic magazine that year. In 1904, he emerged from his seven-year "retirement" to adapt the story into a play, which he directed himself, as he usually did with his plays. The Fairy's Dilemma was Gilbert's only play premiered at the Garrick Theatre, which he had built in 1889. Incidental music for the piece was arranged by Edmond Rickett, consisting of popular songs of the 1860s and 1870s, such as "Champagne Charlie". The Fairy's Dilemma was Gilbert's last full-length non-musical play.

Arthur Bourchier had leased the Garrick in 1900, and he and his wife Violet Vanbrugh starred in numerous plays there over the next six years often producing new works, including The Fairy's Dilemma. The piece garnered enthusiastic opening-night reviews in London on 3 May 1904. According to The New York Times, the play "met with distinct success. It is brilliantly nonsensical". The Telegraph called it "a new sensation". The Manchester Guardian wrote, "The piece kept the whole house laughing almost without intermission during the two short hours of its duration.... It restores Mr. Gilbert to the stage in his most irresistibly whimsical vein, and deserves to rank among the brightest and most exhilarating of his productions." The Observer noted its "immense superiority", "fresh dramatic wit" and the audience's "sensation of delight not less keen than rare", while opining that "age cannot wither" Gilbert's "finish and precision... his mordant wit" and his "brilliant fun". Max Beerbohm, writing in The Saturday Review, however, criticised the show for being more appropriate to the 1870s.

The Fairy's Dilemma is a parody of the conventional harlequinade and of melodrama. However, the play was written decades after the heyday of the harlequinade. Houses were good at first, but despite its initial success and good reviews, the audience dwindled, and it lasted only 90 performances and was withdrawn on 22 July 1904. Violet Vanbrugh speculated that too few theatregoers remembered the old harlequinade well enough to enjoy the parody. Nevertheless, the piece was sent on a brief tour.