The Girl Behind the Counter

The Girl Behind the Counter
Isabel Jay as Winnie Willoughby
Music	Howard Talbot
Lyrics	Arthur Anderson Percy Greenbank
Book	Arthur Anderson Leedham Bantok
Productions	1906 West End 1907 Broadway

The Girl Behind the Counter is an Edwardian musical comedy with a book by Arthur Anderson and Leedham Bantok, music by Howard Talbot and lyrics by Arthur Anderson (and additional lyrics by Percy Greenbank), produced by Frank Curzon.

It opened at Wyndham's Theatre on 21 April 1906. The farcical musical starred Isabel Jay, C. Hayden Coffin and Lawrence Grossmith. It ran for 141 performances in the original London production, and an adaptation ran for twice that long in 1907–08 on Broadway. The Broadway production was "freely adapted and reconstructed by Edgar Smith" and starred Lew Fields and Connie Ediss.

It toured successfully thereafter in the British provinces, the U.S., Australia and elsewhere and enjoyed several revivals.

[To come]

Act I - The "Maison Duval."

Act II - The Baron's Court Exhibition. "The Rose Carnival."

Lew Fields produced and starred in a Broadway adaptation at the Herald Square Theatre. It ran from 1 October 1907 to 6 June 1908, a total of 282 performances, directed by J. C. Huffman.

The opening night cast for the Broadway adaptation included:

Henry Schniff, in debt to his landlady for four years' rent, marries her. While on their honeymoon, he learns that he has inherited one million pounds sterling. Now his wife, the former Mrs. Willoughby, insists on mixing in with "society". Her daughter, Winnie Willoughby, does not agree with her mother's choice of a husband for her, the broke and stupid Viscount Augustus Gushington. Instead, Winnie wants to run a flower stall at an American department store in London, "where American methods of handling everything are satirized".