Le Procès Veauradieux

The Vaudeville was officially closed for the customary summer break, and Paris was in the middle of a heatwave, but the members of the theatre's company decided to stage the play regardless of their management.

He and his colleague Tardivaut fabricate a case – the Veauradieux trial – to create an alibi for their extramarital affairs.

Eventually all is safely resolved, and the men are back under the supervision of their wives (and mothers-in-law) convinced that dissipation does not suit them.

[3] Dion Boucicault adapted the play as Forbidden Fruit, premiered on Broadway in 1876,[10] That version was given in the West End in 1880,[11] but the first version of Le Procès Veauradieux seen in London was The Great Divorce Case by "John Doe and Richard Roe" (later revealed to be Clement Scott and Arthur Mattison),[12] successfully produced by Charles Wyndham at the Criterion Theatre, London, in April 1876.

[13] That version, which was suitably toned down to satisfy the Lord Chamberlain (the official censor) and the Victorian public, was translated back into French so that a French troupe, led by Didier and Schey, could perform the more respectable version during their 1876 season in London: the Lord Chamberlain declined to license Delacour and Hennequin's original.