Jane Annie

Jane Annie, or The Good Conduct Prize is a comic opera written in 1893 by J. M. Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle, with music by Ernest Ford, a conductor and occasional composer.

When the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership disbanded after the production of The Gondoliers in 1889, impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte was forced to find new works to present at the Savoy Theatre.

He had not yet created his classic Peter Pan, and his only stage productions included a biography that closed after one night, a parody of new-to-London Henrik Ibsen, and in 1892 his first real success, Walker, London for Toole's Theatre.

Barrie and Conan Doyle made revisions, but the piece closed after a run of only 50 performances, despite a strong cast that included such Savoy favourites as Rutland Barrington, Walter Passmore, Rosina Brandram, Emmie Owen, and Decima Moore.

Jane Annie closed at the Savoy on 1 July 1893 and went on tour to Bradford, Newcastle, Manchester, and Birmingham, until 26 August 1893.

Note on Terminology: A proctor is a senior member of the university staff responsible for discipline, including assigning fines, as well as general administration.

Jane Annie is set at a girls' boarding school near a famous English university town (implied to be Oxford).

Miss Sims introduces her guests as the Proctor and his bulldogs, who are at the school to capture a student who is "carrying on a flirtation".

The press students from the university, who have been following the Proctor to get a story out of him, are near enough to hear the scream, so they join the girls and Miss Sims in finding Bab in Jane Annie's arms, fainted from fright.

The press students ambush him with an interview and they repeatedly misinterpret his statements and his attempted corrections, so he invents a story to avoid scandal.

Jack appears, swearing revenge for false arrest, and Miss Sims decides to reward Jane Annie for foiling Bab's elopement.

The girls enter, playing at the hole, and Miss Sims, hypnotised by Jane Annie, decides that some men may be admitted as part of their end-of-semester celebration.

When she's alone with Jane Annie, Miss Sims says that she had the oddest dream of writing several letters that morning, which Caddie delivered.

The happy couples escape, and when the spell is broken, Miss Sims and the Proctor realise that a joke has been played on them, and their reputations are ruined.

"[2] The critics generally condemned the opera, calling the authors to task for a boring story and criticising Ford for his highly derivative score.

[3] The Stage wrote that, "Dramatically, Jane Annie is simply a sketch of schoolgirl caprice and persistent waywardness".