The Red Petticoat: History and Key Facts

The Red Petticoat is a musical comedy in 3 acts with music by Jerome Kern and a book and lyrics by Rida Johnson Young and Paul West. The Western-genre musical starred Helen Lowell as tough lady barber Sophie Brush in a fictional rough silver-mining town in Nevada, who gets her man. Songs included "I Wonder", "My Peaches and Cream", "Oh You Beautiful Spring", "The Ragtime Restaurant", and "Since the Days of Grandmamma". The musical was based on a 1911 farcical melodrama by Young titled Next!. It was Kern's first complete score.

After a tryout in Philadelphia, the show opened at Daly's Theatre on November 13, 1912, directed by Joseph W. Herbert, and moved to the Broadway Theatre, closing on January 4, 1913, after 61 performances. The critics praised the show and particularly the score. After the Broadway run, the show toured.

Source and attribution

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