Written by W.S. Gilbert
Music composed by Alberto Randegger
First produced at the Royal Court Theatre (under the management
of Miss M. Litton) on April 2nd, 1871.
Libretto, submitted to the Archive by Ian Bond:
The reasons for the disappearance of CREATURES OF IMPULSE are by no means clear. The initial run lasted for some 91 performances at the Court Theatre between 15th April and 29th July 1871, during which time it partnered five other works (two of which were full length Gilbert plays). This was by no means the end of the piece's career. A revival took place, again at the Court, during October-November 1872, and again at the Vaudeville Theatre from 6th July to 30th October 1874.
The reason may lie in the fact that the libretto never seems to have been the same at any production. The second Court Theatre production being described as 'a shortened version', and the Vaudeville production as 'an altered version'. Some version of the libretto was still retained in French's Amateur Catalogue as late as 1971, although how near this adhered to the original I am unable to say, having not been able to obtain a copy.
The libretto as presented here is a combination from two sources.
1) The manuscript licence copy in the Lord Chamberlain's collection
at the British Library. It is from this source that the second
stanza of the Opening Chorus, and the lyrics of No's 2, 3, 5 and
the final section of the Finale have been obtained.
2) The libretto as printed in Chatto and Windus', "Original Plays by W.S. Gilbert - Series Four".
Not only did the licence copy supply missing lyrics, but it also revealed that in some productions the characters were named differently.
Indeed, at certain points in the Chatto and Windus version, Pipette is erroneously named Jenny. This has been corrected in this version.
The other reason for the lack of performance of course, is the apparent disappearance of Randegger's score. This was never published, and presumably those productions that used the musical numbers (it would appear that some didn't), must have coped with hand-copied parts.
The original cast was as follows:
Page created 31 May 1997