The ‘Mind the Paint’ Girl

A comedy in four acts, first staged in London in 1912, this play follows Lily Parradell, the reigning favourite of the Pandora, the city’s leading musical-comedy theatre. Born poor in a grocer’s shop across the river and sent to factory work as a child, she has climbed to the top of a glittering, precarious profession. Pinero built the piece around a real fixture of the Edwardian stage: the marriages between young noblemen and the stars of musical comedy. Around Lily circle Lord Farncombe, whose courtship drives the plot, and Captain Jeyes, a former army officer who threw over his commission to stay near her. More than a love story, it works as a wry, closely observed portrait of theatrical London and the women who made their name on its boards.