What Happened to Jones is an 1897 farce by George Broadhurst. It was his first successful play and remained popular for many years, and was also adapted into three silent films.[1]
What Happened to Jones was Broadhurst's second play to be staged, after the flop of his first play, The Speculator (1896). Broadhurst had to become his own producer, with funding from his brother Thomas, as he could find no one else to take it on.
It had its London debut at The Strand on April 9, 1898,[18][19] and enjoyed a long run of 383 performances, and was the last success of John S. Clarke as manager of the Strand.[20] Charles Arnold starred in this production, and then successfully took it abroad, including to Australia and South Africa.[21][22] It was revived at London's Terry's Theatre from January 22nd 1900.[23]
In 1915, McClure's magazine noted Broadhurst's and Arnold's success with the play, that Jones was still being played by stock houses some 18 years after its debut, and could be revived successfully on Broadway if Broadhurst was not so focused on new plays.[24]
In 2000, the Metropolitan Playhouse in New York mounted a revised version of the play with updated dialogue.[25]
The critical reviews of the play were lukewarm at best, but acknowledged that audiences were laughing heartily throughout. The Sun wrote that "there was nothing ingeniously novel in the design of the piece, nor any particularly bright wit or unctuous humor," but it "should not be underrated as a farce of the uproarious kind. It made its first New York audience laugh a great deal."[9]The New York Times found it "an exceedingly artificial piece in which the artifice is plainly apparent from first to last to the critical playgoer, who finds in it some really funny passages, and many others which are almost depressing in spite of the hard labor of the performers." Of George C. Boniface, Jr.'s performance as Jones, the Times said he "has a droll and quizzical personality, but he has been too busily employed in Mr. Hoyt's farces and comic opera to learn to act."[7]
^Advertisements, New York Tribune (theatre advertisements show Jones as playing last week at the Manhattan, to be followed by The First Born on October 5; the Bijou shows it is wrapping Broadhurst's The Wrong Mrs. Right, with Jones starting on October 4)
^(13 November 1897). Advertisement, New York Tribune, p. 8 last column (advertisement for Bijou announces it is last night of the play; to by followed by The Swell Miss Fitzwell starring May Irwin)
