With their musical burlesques, operettas, and spectacular extravagances, the musical entertainments of London's Gaiety Theatre contributed significantly to the evolution of musical comedy. Starting in 1880 with Robert Reece's "The Forty Theatre," which introduced a full score by a single writing team, the Gaiety musicals of the 1880s blended dialogue and music into a fully integrated story thus creating what would eventually become the pattern in...