thumb|right|A scene from the 1902 production, including [[H. B. Irving as Crichton (left) and Henry Kemble, as the Earl of Loam (centre).]]
The Admirable Crichton is a comic stage play written in 1902 by J. M. Barrie and premiered in London in that year and in New York the next. It gently satirises English society by depicting the change in the balance of power between privileged aristocrats and a practical and resourceful butler when they are all shipwrecked on a desert island. The butler gradually becomes the benign ruler of the island and the aristocrats become his subjects until they are all rescued and conventional social relations are restored.
The three main roles are the butler – Crichton, Lady Mary Lasenby, and her father, the Earl of Loam. Actors starring as Crichton have included H. B. Irving, Walter Hampden, Kenneth More, Hugh Quarshie, Edward Fox and George Cole. Among those playing Lady Mary have been Irene Vanbrugh, Fay Bainter, Sally Ann Howes, Virginia McKenna, Prunella Scales and Niamh Cusack. Those playing Lord Loam have included Henry Kemble, Eric Lewis, Rex Harrison and Michael Denison.
Background
By November 1902 J. M. Barrie was established as a West End playwright. His comedy Walker, London (1892) had run for 511 performances and The Little Minister (1897) for 320 performances. He had less outstanding, but still successful, runs with The Professor's Love Story (1894) and The Wedding Guest (1900). His Quality Street had a modest run on Broadway in 1901–02 and opened in London in September 1902, running for 459 performances.
Barrie took the title for his next play from an epithet applied by Sir Thomas Urquhart to James Crichton, a sixteenth-century Scottish traveller, polymath, and swordsman; Barrie's play features Bill Crichton, a butler whose resourcefulness rivals that of the historical Crichton. In a notebook entry for 1899 Barrie recorded two sources for the story: a remark made by Arthur Conan Doyle while he was staying with Barrie in Kirriemuir in 1893: "If a king and an able seaman were wrecked together on a desert island for the rest of their lives, the sailor would end as king and the monarch as his servant". The scene in the first act, in which Lord Loam and family entertain their servants, was based on a similar real-life occurrence in the household of Rosalind, Countess of Carlisle, an English aristocrat with radical views. Another possible influence is Ludwig Fulda's 1895 play (1896), in which a shipwrecked grandee finds himself becoming subordinate to a resourceful and practical employee. That play was published in German in 1896, but never translated into English or produced in Britain.
Premieres
The play was produced by Charles Frohman and directed by Dion Boucicault. The New York premiere followed in November 1903 at the Lyceum Theatre, where the production ran for 144 performances. Henry Kemble, Sybil Carlisle and Pattie Browne were in both the London and the New York opening casts.|group=n
| Sybil Carlisle
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| – Lady Catherine Lasenby
| Sybil Carlisle