Judge — March 15, 1924 — page 4: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The First Musical Comedy" - Analysis This illustration satirizes early musical theater by depicting characters from Genesis in a vaudeville-style scene. The caption identifies "Adam and Eve in Bananas," "Eden's Savannahs," and "The Ichthyosauru" performing together, with the absurdist chorus "Yes, we have no bananas!" The satire targets the low quality and nonsensical plots of contemporary musical comedies—mixing biblical characters, prehistoric creatures, and fruit peddlers in one incoherent spectacle. The deliberately ridiculous premise (Adam, Eve, and dinosaurs singing about bananas) mocks how musical comedies prioritized spectacle and novelty songs over logical storytelling. This appears to critique Judge magazine's contemporary theater scene, suggesting that early 1920s musical comedies were absurdist entertainments more concerned with catchy tunes than coherent narratives.