 As "The Observer" noted in their opening night review of the piece, Gilbert turns inside out, as no other dramatist could do as well, conventional Christmas pantomimes, "with their good fairies and wicked demons supernaturally influencing the destinies of unnatural lovers... Mr. Gilbert makes the goodness of the Fairy Rosebud as perfunctory as the wickedness of the Demon Alcohol; and it is she who, with a view to her own professional advancement, invents for the Demon the malignant plot".Further, in a parody of the melodramatic conventions of the Victorian era, the bad baronet is not bad, the innocent damsel is not innocent, and the stern judge delights in entertaining his court.When the judge turns into Pantaloon, he exclaims, "it's not as great a change as I should have supposed!"