Critical and Audience Reception
At the opening night performance, the majority of the audience showed their disappointment. During the second act, Barrie and Doyle left their private box. Ford was applauded for his music, but the audience did not call for the authors. "Towards the end it became more and more apparent that the audience were getting rather bored, and the final verdict... was far from enthusiastic."
The critics generally condemned the opera, calling the authors to task for a boring story and criticising Ford for his highly derivative score. The Stage wrote that, "Dramatically, Jane Annie is simply a sketch of schoolgirl caprice and persistent waywardness". The paper lamented that the opera was funnier to read than to see on stage. The Times had a more favourable view of the piece. The cast and crew were praised by some critics for their efforts at working such unworthy parts. "However hard worked, she remained thoroughly embarrassed by the whole thing. As curtain-calls were being taken, she refused to come out of her dressing-room, though pit and gallery shouted for her for five minutes; and when at length the piece was taken on tour, she absolutely refused to go with it."
Read more about this topic: Jane Annie
Famous quotes containing the words critical, audience and/or reception:
“If our entertainment culture seems debased and unsatisfying, the hope is that our children will create something of greater worth. But it is as if we expect them to create out of nothing, like God, for the encouragement of creativity is in the popular mind, opposed to instruction. There is little sense that creativity must grow out of tradition, even when it is critical of that tradition, and children are scarcely being given the materials on which their creativity could work”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The function of the actor is to make the audience imagine for the moment that real things are happening to real people.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)