Little Jack Sheppard

Beginning with Little Jack Sheppard, however, Hollingshead's successor, George Edwardes, expanded the format of the burlesques to full-length pieces with original music by Meyer Lutz, instead of scores compiled from popular tunes.

[4] These included Monte Cristo Jr. (1886); Miss Esmeralda (1887), Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim (1887), Mazeppa, Faust up to Date (1888), Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué (1888), Carmen up to Data (1890), Cinder Ellen up too Late (1891), and Don Juan (1892, with lyrics by Adrian Ross).

It featured Nellie Farren as Jack Sheppard, Fred Leslie as Jonathan Wild, David James as Blueskin and Marion Hood as Winifred[11] Other cast members included Willie Warde (who also choreographed the dances) and Sylvia Grey.

[16] The piece was produced in New York in 1886 at The Bijou Theatre[17] and had its Australian premiere in Melbourne in December 1886 at the Opera House,[18] with Fanny Robina as Jack and Lionel Brough as Wild.

[22] The plot, as reported in The Era, 2 January 1886, was as follows:[23] "After a preliminary chorus of rustics, introducing the now threadbare allusion to three acres and a cow, we have the musical courtship of fascinating Winifred Wood and her lover Thames Darrell.

Thames is being persecuted by his wicked uncle Sir Rowland Trenchard who has enlisted Jonathan Wild in his pay, and the latter presently brings his chorus of pretty Janissaries upon the scene.

"The second act shows Jack carousing with his boon companions in a hall gorgeous enough to be Aladdin's Palace, but which is understood to be merely the 'cave of harmony' at the 'Crown and Sovereign' in the Mint.

Here Blueskin presides over a free-and-easy with all the genial aplomb of a music hall chairman, and obliges the company with a spirited rendering of the quaint old ditty 'Botany Bay', which is, of course, given with the time-honoured whistling variations in the chorus.

"The third act transports us to the interior of Newgate [Prison], where we find Jack carving his name on the walls of the condemned cell, and keeping up his spirits by engaging in a duet and a pas de deux with his jailer, Wild.

"The final meet of all the characters takes place on Willesden green, where Wild and Sir Rowland are denounced as Jacobites by Jack, who receives as a reward the King's pardon, and forthwith marries the girl of his choice."