According to a study by Robert Tanitch , by 2002 there had been least eight adaptations of the play as a musical , though " never with conspicuous success " . The earliest such version was a 1927 American show entitled Oh Earnest . The journalist Mark Bostridge comments , " The libretto of a 1957 musical adaptation , Half in Earnest , deposited in the British Library , is scarcely more encouraging . The curtain rise on Algy strumming away at the piano , singing ' I can play Chopsticks , Lane ' . Other songs include — almost predictably — ' A Bunburying I Must Go ' . "