in 1962 by two British academics, George Rowell and Kenneth Mobbs. As in the 1925 American version, new lyrics were fitted to existing tunes, in this case almost all by Sullivan. The adaptation was premiered by an amateur company in 1962 and received its first professional production later that year in Windsor. The Times, reviewing the latter, commented, "One might have expected a patchwork, but the play, still extremely amusing, emerges surprisingly whole and unaffected except that by the addition of Sullivan's music its hard brilliance is transmuted as usual to gold". The adaptation had an amateur American premiere in New York in 1965, presented by the Village Light Opera Group, which produced it again in 1984, both times conducted by Ronald Noll. This adaptation was presented at the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival in 2017. In 2007 a recording was released of a third musical adaptation of the play, entitled Topsy Turvy Loves, using music from the Gilbert and Sullivan operas but cutting much of the dialogue, and an Equity Showcase production of the adaptation was mounted in 2009 by the Wings Theatre Company in New York. Critical reception Engaged divided critics after its first performance. Most reviewers praised the piece for its wit and social comment, but a few found it too biting and misanthropic to be palatable. The Era judged it "one of those clever, fanciful, comical, satirical bits of extravagance in the way of stage work which might be expected from the pen of Mr Gilbert, but hardly from that of any other living author". Calling the play "smart, witty ... humorous ... brilliant" and Gilbert's "most Gilbertian" work, H. Savile Clarke wrote in The Theatre that "assuredly no writer has ever laid bare with a keener scalpel the sham and pretension that underlies the society of today." The reviewer in The Athenaeum wrote, "The experiment has rarely, if ever before, been made of supplying a drama in three acts in which there is not a single human being who does not proclaim himself absolutely detestable", but the critic concluded that whether despite or because of this, Engaged was "one of the most mirthful and original that has, during late years, been seen on the stage". The New York Times reviewer wrote in 1879, "Mr Gilbert, in his best work, has always shown a tendency to present improbabilities from a probable point of view, and in