The Catch of the Season

The Catch of the Season
Hicks and Terriss
Music	Herbert Haines Evelyn Baker
Lyrics	Charles H. Taylor
Book	Seymour Hicks Cosmo Hamilton
Basis	Cinderella
Productions	1904 West End 1905 Broadway 1907 Budapest 1909 Sydney 1913 Vienna

The Catch of the Season is an Edwardian musical comedy by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, with music by Herbert Haines and Evelyn Baker and lyrics by Charles H. Taylor, based on the fairy tale Cinderella. It was produced by Agostino and Stefano Gatti and American Charles Frohman at the Vaudeville Theatre in London, opening on 9 September 1904 and running for a very successful 621 performances. The production starred Zena Dare as Angela, because Hicks' wife Ellaline Terriss was pregnant. Later Terriss played the role for a time, ceding it to Dare's sister, Phyllis Dare. It also starred Hicks and Louie Pounds. Belgian-American actress Camille Clifford, who played Sylvia Gibson, became perhaps the most famous "Gibson Girl".

Frohman produced the musical on both sides of the Atlantic, and one year after the premiere, with the London production still running, he exported the The Catch of the Season to Daly's Theater in New York, where Edna May starred with an English supporting cast and a chorus of English and French "Gibson Girls". The score was supplemented with numerous interpolations, principally by American music director William T. Francis and also by Jerome Kern.

Other international productions followed. In Budapest The Catch of the Season was translated as A bálkirálynő by in 1907. The Australian premiere was at Her Majesty's Theatre, Sydney in 1909. In Vienna Die Ballkönigin, translated by Fritz Lunzer and actor Karl Tuschl, was mounted twice in 1913, first at the , then as a holiday entertainment at the Theater an der Wien. London revivals included a 1917 production at the Prince's Theatre.