Cirrus@Austlit

Advertised as an 'entirely novel, original burlesque; grotesque, poetical, pastoral, pictorial, grand comic pantomime… [with] new local hits [and] new topical songs,' Goody Two Shoes was adapted by a person or person's unknown from E. L. Blanchard's 1862 Drury Lane pantomime (original music by John Barnard). The 1880 Melbourne production was also specially adapted by Mr and Mrs G. B. W. Lewis to accommodate both adult performers and more than a hundred juvenile performers. In reporting on the production in early January the Australian Sketcher with Pen and Pencil records:

The pantomime enables a large number of Mrs G. B. W. Lewis's juvenile company [more than 100 children] to take part, and as the play is woven of two nursery stories, there is a particular fitness in their doing so. The ballet is supported by representatives of the different flowers, and is declared the most beautiful thing of its kind ever attempted on the Melbourne stage. The transformation scene is painted by Mr Grist, and is received with great applause nightly (1 Jan. 1881, 11).

The scenes, as recorded in an Argus advertisement on Christmas Eve 1880 indicates the following settings. Act 1; Sc 1. Village School of Goody Two Shoes; Sc 2. Hunting Lodge on the Borders of the Forest (sunset); Sc 3. The Bramble Brake in the Depth of the Forest; Sc 4. Haunt of the Wood Nymphs in the Enchanted Dell; Grand Tableaux (including ballet); Act 2; Sc 1. Avenue Leading to Buttercup Mead; Sc. 2. Who Killed Cock Robin?; Transformation Scene; Harlequinade ("Grand Double Lilliputian Harlequinade").

Songs included: 'Kiss Me Darling' (sung by Mrs G. B. W. Lewis), 'The Cuckoo' (Baby Flora Graupner), 'Farmer's Song' (Fred Thorne and children), 'Poppies in the Corn' (Mrs G. B. W. Lewis and children), 'He's Got Em On' (topical song by Fred Thorne), 'I Cannot Say Goodbye' (Little Annie May), 'Jack and Jills' (Tiny Amy Brooks), and 'The Repentant Schoolboy' (Mrs G. B. W. Lewis and Fred Thorne).

Other features included a skipping-rope hornpipe (performed by Baby Alice Browning, aged five), 'The Vertiginous Birds of Prey' (comic dance), a comic swing scene (Master Stevenson), Grand Juvenile Floral Ballet (children aged 3 - 13), and a Maypole Dance.

Described in the Argus as the best pantomime seen at the Academy of Music in years, a script from the successful London-produced burlesque extravaganza had reportedly been sent to Mrs G.B.W. Lewis by Lydia Thompson. Said to have abounded in 'lively dialogue, taking airs and amusing situations... one of the most pleasing incidents in the piece [being] a ballet by a dozen children dressed charmingly a la Watteau' (27 December 1876, p.6), the Melbourne production included 'some local allusions of an obvious and apposite character.' While the identity of the localiser(s) remains unidentified, it is possible that Lance Lenton (one of the company members) was responsible or most, if not all, of the additions.

Played out over two acts the scenic settings comprised:

Act 1. Scene 1. The Village of Latakia (Grand Procession on the Arrival of Bluebeard);

Scene 2. Moonlight Path to Castle Bluebeard;

Scene 3. The Dazzling Hall of Many Nuptials (including the Ballet a la Watteau and the sudden appearance of the Heather Chinee);

Act 2. Scene 1. The Blue Chamber;

Scene 2. Look-out Portals and Ramparts of Castle Bluebeard;

Transformation Scene: The Plumed Throne of Fairyland.

The scenic art came in for much praise from the Argus critic. The 'Dazzling Hall of Many Nuptuals,' for example, is said to have depicted marble and malachite arches, and an illuminated lake and distant garden. The transformation scene was also spectacular, starting off with a castle situated on heights above a picturesque lake with views of the sea, complete with rocks and caves obscured by golden haze. 'When this disappears,' writes the critic, 'a gorgeous combination of fountains and gigantic baskets of fruit and flowers framed in feathers is revealed, and lastly the background is filled up by a sparkling waterfall, to which from every available point flock fairies, in cars drawn by birds of paradise, the whole forming a brilliant and beautiful picture' (ibid, 6).

[Source: Australian Variety Theatre Archive]