Pretty Polly

Pretty Polly is a one-act playlet by Basil Hood, with music composed by François Cellier. The ten-minute long piece concerns the difficulties of a shy fellow who tries to use a talking parrot as a matrimonial agent. The piece was first produced at the Theatre Royal, Colchester, 26 April 1900, and then at the Savoy Theatre, from 19 May 1900 to 28 June 1900 as a companion piece to Hood and Sir Arthur Sullivan's The Rose of Persia, a run of 26 performances. It then played from 8 December 1900 to 20 April 1901, together with the first revival of Gilbert and Sullivan's 1881 hit, Patience, a run of 102 performances. No printed libretto or vocal score is found in British Library, although the licence copy of the libretto is there. The music appears to have been added for the Savoy Theatre production, as it is not indicated in the licence copy. Background When the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership disbanded after the production of The Gondoliers in 1889, impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte filled the Savoy Theatre with a combination of new works (several of which were composed by Arthur Sullivan) and revivals of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The fashion in the late Victorian era was to present long evenings in the theatre, and so producer Richard D'Oyly Carte preceded his Savoy operas with curtain raisers. W. J. MacQueen-Pope commented, concerning such curtain raisers: This was a one-act play, seen only by the early comers. It would play to empty boxes, half-empty upper circle, to a gradually filling stalls and dress circle, but to an attentive, grateful and appreciative pit and gallery. Often these plays were little gems. They deserved much better treatment than they got, but those who saw them delighted in them. ... [They] served to give young actors and actresses a chance to win their spurs ... the stalls and the boxes lost much by missing the curtain-raiser, but to them dinner was more important.