Ruy Blas and the Blase Roue

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Souvenir programme

Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué is a burlesque written by A. C. Torr and Herbert F. Clark with music by Meyer Lutz. It is based on the Victor Hugo drama Ruy Blas. As with many of the Gaiety burlesques, the title is a pun. The more terrible the pun, the more Victorian audiences were amused.^[1]

After a tryout in Birmingham beginning on 3 September 1889, Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué opened in London later in September 1889 at the Gaiety Theatre and ran for 289 performances. The cast included Nellie Farren, Frederick Leslie, Marion Hood, Letty Lind, Sylvia Grey, Linda Verner, Blanche Massie, Alice Young, Lilly Harold, Dalton Sommers, Fred Storey and Ben Nathan.^[2] The piece toured in the British provinces and internationally.

John Hollingshead had ruled the Gaiety Theatre from 1868 to 1886 as a venue for variety, continental operetta, light comedy, and numerous musical burlesques composed or arranged by the theatre's music director, Wilhelm Meyer Lutz. Nellie Farren, as the theatre's "principal boy," and Fred Leslie starred at the Gaiety for over 20 years. He wrote many of its pieces under his pseudonym, "A. C. Torr".^[3] Hollingshead called himself a "licensed dealer in legs, short skirts, French adaptations, Shakespeare, taste and musical glasses."^[4] Later, the theatre became the home of musical comedies, under Edwardes' management.