Little Mary Sunshine was conceived and staged as an affectionate sendup of operettas and old-fashioned musicals, the genre of Victor Herbert, Rudolf Friml, and Sigmund Romberg.

It also has allusions to Gilbert and Sullivan, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Noël Coward, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and other musical theatre composers and lyricists.

Its "Indians" and "forest rangers" (thinly disguised Mounties) allude to Friml's Rose-Marie, as does the song "Colorado Love Call".

Numerous other, less obvious details point, in a humorous and lighthearted manner, to other operettas and musicals — sometimes specifically, sometimes in terms of general categories of songs or characters.

The 1954 Marc Blitzstein adaptation of The Threepenny Opera, which ran for six years, showed that musicals could be profitable off-Broadway in a small-scale, small orchestra format.

[1] The original Off-Broadway production opened on November 18, 1959, at the Orpheum Theatre in New York City's East Village and was directed and choreographed by Ray Harrison and featured Eileen Brennan in the title role, with William Graham as Captain Warington, and John McMartin as Corporal Jester.

London's original West End production of the show — in some respects the first full stage presentation — was directed by Paddy Stone and starred Patricia Routledge, Terence Cooper, Bernard Cribbins and Ed Bishop.

The government is threatening to foreclose the mortgage on her Colorado Inn, located on land that is subject to a dispute between Brown Bear and Uncle Sam.

Yellow Feather's "crimes" are actually not murder and pillage but indiscriminate hunting and irresponsible use of fire in the forest, but he is nonetheless a villain of the deepest dye, who has threatened to "have his way" with Mary.

Fairfax has good news: the courts have upheld Brown Bear's claim to the disputed land, a mere one-fourth of Colorado.

The musical numbers for Little Mary Sunshine are appropriately tongue-in-cheek: any triteness and corn (and there is a good deal of both) is fully intended, rather than inadvertent.

[8] The New York Times called the musical "a merry and sprightly spoof of an era when 'justice always triumphed'... Little Mary Sunshine is an affectionate jab at the type of operetta that Rudolf Friml... made popular in the early Nineteen Twenties....

"[9] Writing for the same paper, Brooks Atkinson wrote : "There are echos of both Gilbert and Sullivan in his dainty caricature of the old-fashioned operetta and musical comedy.