Hazy?  Not at all.  This is really a clear and reasonably correct definition of the average one-act musical colnedy, for this type of act is usually about fifty per cent. girl, twenty per cent. costumes and scenery, twenty-five per cent. music, and usually, but not always, five per cent. comedy.  A musical comedy, therefore, is not music and comedy—­it is girls and music.  That is why the trade name of this, one of the most pleasing of vaudeville acts, is—­a girl-act.”

It was the girl-act, perhaps more than any other one style of act, that helped to build vaudeville up to its present high standing.  On nearly every bill of the years that are past there was a girl-act.  It is a form of entertainment that pleases young and old, and coming in the middle or toward the end of a varied program, it lends a touch of romance and melody without which many vaudeville bills would seem incomplete.

A girl-act is a picture, too.  Moreover, it holds a touch of bigness, due to the number of its people, their changing costumes, and the length of time the act holds the stage.  With its tuneful haste, its swiftly moving events, its rapid dialogue, its succession of characters, and its ever-changing, colorful pictures, the one-act musical comedy is not so much written as put together.

1.  The Musical Elements

Technically known as a girl-act, and booked by managers who wish a “flash”—­a big effect—­the one-act musical comedy naturally puts its best foot foremost as soon as the curtain rises.  And, equally of course, it builds up its effects into a concluding best-foot.

The best-foot of a musical comedy is the ensemble number, in which all the characters—­save the principals, sometimes—­join in a rousing song.  The ensemble is musical comedy, and one-act musical comedy is—­let this exaggeration clinch the truth—­the ensemble. [1]

[1] Of course, I am discussing the usual musical comedy—­the flash of a bill—­in pointing out so forcefully the value of the ensemble.  There have been some fine one-act musical comedies in which the ensemble was not used at all.  Indeed, the musical comedy in one act without any ensemble offers most promising possibilities.

Between the opening and the closing ensembles there is usually one other ensemble number, and sometimes two.  And between these three or four ensembles there are usually one or two single numbers—­solos by a man or a woman—­and a duet, or a trio, or a quartet.  These form the musical element of the one-act musical comedy.

2.  Scenery and Costumes—­The Picture-Elements

While the one-act musical comedy may be played in one set of scenery only, it very often happens that there are two or three different scenes.  The act may open in One, as did Joe Hart’s “If We Said What We Thought,” and then go into Full Stage; or it may open in Full Stage, go into One for a little musical number, and then go back into a different full-stage scene for its finish.  It may even be divided into three big scenes—­each played in a different set—­with two interesting numbers in One, if time permits, or the act be planned to make its appeal by spectacular effects.