13 SEPTEMBER 1856, Page 9

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Sadler's Wells, which reopened on Saturday last, might in its normal state of legitimacy, symbolized by Mr. Phelps in the never-failing cha- racter of Macbeth, and the Surrey, which reopened on Monday, rich with new drama of the modem French school, give indications that the the- atrical season is fairly setting in ; and on Monday next—no accident pre- venting—Drury Lane and the Lyceum will be ready to receive their pa- trons. The Olympic season, rendered more than ordinarily durable by the success of Mr. Robson in the burlesque Medea, closes tonight, with a performance for the benefit of the acting-manager. We do not often notice the theatricals on the Southern bank of the Thames ; but the new Surrey drama, which is entitled Half-Caste, and is an adaptation of the Sang Mae of M. Edouard Plouvier, produced about six months ago at the Porte St. Martin, deserves respectful mention. The principal character, a vindictive slave, who has destroyed his mas- ter's plantation in Guadeloupe, and on the strength of his ill-gotten wealth settles at Paris, where he passes himself off as an English noble- man, fill he is annihilated by the force of crushing evidence as to his real antecedents, is very forcibly drawn by the French author, and finds a very adequate representative in Mr. Creswick, one of the managers of the Surrey. He is one of those bad Men who frequently scare but are never execrated ; inasmuch as they can show a large amount of received injury in apology for their crimes ; evince a mental and physical power of resistance which increases with the overwhelming power of adverse circumstances; and lastly, have that faculty for dying game by means of which even a common malefactor may earn a sprig of laurel. The situations that are contrived to exhibit the battle between the stout- hearted criminal and his Nemesis are of the most striking kind ; and— what is the most exciting part of the affair—one does not know till just before the fall of the curtain whether the Nemesis will not be the loser after all.