Foggerty's Fairy

‘Take care. The consequences of an act are often much more numerous and important than people have any idea of.’ Today W.S. Gilbert is best known for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, a creative partnership that diverged over the supernatural. Unlike Sullivan, Gilbert was a great fan of fairy tales, and Foggerty’s Fairy, one of his most unjustly neglected plays, is a brilliant farcical comedy that hinges on the wish-granting of a fairy. Loosely based on his short story ‘The Story of a Twelfth Cake’, Foggerty’s Fairy considers the dangers of playing with the past. Trying to shore up his relationship, a man enlists a fairy’s help to make a few tweaks in his past – he soon realises, however, these small changes have made great waves through time, and his present becomes unbearable.

'The wildest absurdity ever perpetrated.' (The Era)

William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911) was a dramatist, poet, author, illustrator and librettist. Although he was a prolific writer, producing around 75 plays and dramatic works, he is best known today for the comic operas he produced in collaboration with Arthur Sullivan, including HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado, which continue to enjoy huge popularity worldwide. Andrew Crowther, the Secretary of the W.S. Gilbert Society and the author of the major biography Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan, as well as a variety of comic plays including Welcome to Paradise, Funny Men and Working Lives, is the undisputed authority on the life and works of W.S. Gilbert. He has for many years preached, proselytised, argued and generally made himself annoying on the subject of Gilbert’s literary and cultural importance.