Parental Abandonment/Theatre

Examples of in  include:

""Once there was a poor child with no father and no mother. Everything was dead and there wasn't a soul left on Earth. Everything was dead and the child went out and searched day and night. But since there was no one left on Earth he wanted to go up to Heaven, and indeed the Moon looked down kindly at him, but when he got up to the moon it was just a piece of rotten wood. So he set off for the Sun, and when he got there it was only a withered sunflower, and when he got to the stars they were only golden gnats that a shrike had stuck to the blackthorn bush, and when the child wanted to go back down to Earth, it was just an upside-down chamber pot and the child was all alone. Then he sat down and cried and he's still sitting there to this day, all alone.""
 * General Stanley from The Pirates of Penzance is in fact not an orphan. "More than that, he never was one."
 * The titular pirates, on the other hand, are orphans to a man. Orphaned noblemen, even.
 * Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck involves the titular Anti-Hero killing his girlfriend and their child being abandoned by the neighbours. There's also a scene of an old woman telling the following story to her grandchildren:


 * Seymour Krelborn from Little Shop of Horrors was adopted by Mr. Mushnik, and he just makes the poor guy sweep the flower shop and sleep in the basement.
 * The musical Wicked. Elphaba's mother dies while giving birth to Elphaba's sister. Her dad loves her sister, but is cold and distant towards her because of her looks. He dies later as well. However, Dad
 * The Baker from Into the Woods was abandoned by
 * Brooklyn. The titular character's parents are split up before she's born when her father is called away to war; her mother commits suicide a few years later, and Brooklyn is raised in a convent. After she grows up, she travels from France, where she's lived her whole life, to America, in search of her father. Who doesn't want to be found, and gets really upset when she shows up.
 * In West Side Story, near the beginning it is revealed Riff lives with Tony and his parents for unknown reasons.