14 AUGUST 1858, Page 10

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We have now reached that point in the year at which theatrical ac- tivity usually languishes, but in no season that we can recollect has there been so close an approximation to an absolute pause. The Hay- market, at which the art of dosing seemed altogether lost, has been shut for some weeks, with a view to repairs and improvements ; the Adelphi, another perennial, is in an early state of palingenesis ; the Olympic will repose after the termination of next week ; and thus the Princess's will alone remain open of all the leading houses ; relying, of course, on the attractions of Do Merchant of Venice. At the Lyceum, the performances are indeed perpetually varied, and the revival of Mr. Tom Taylor's Still Waters Run Deep, consequent on the engagement of Mr. Leigh Murray, suffices to chequer the dramatic record. But though the principal characters in this favourite drama, the 'cute man of Lan- cashire and the London swindler, are creditably played by Mr. Murray and Mr. Fitzjames, the style in which the Lyceum is at present ma- naged is so utterly the reverse of brilliant, and the general cast of the pieces is so ostentatiously defective, that without a radical change in the whole system, no production or revival at this house can possibly be of importance to the theatrical world generally.

PARISIAN THEATRICALS.

A fairy spectacle on the subject of the Sleeping Beauty, concocted by MM. Siraudin, L. Thiboust, and A. Choler, is now played at the Palais Royal. The old tale is so far modified, that the beauty who goes to sleep is a widow, with a little boy, who keeps broad awake during the long trance of his mother, and proves a serious annoyance, when the dissolu- tion of the somniferous spell restores her to the world of life and motion. The lady, stopped short in her advance towards old age, is only eighteen; her son, on the other hand, is a hundred and four. .Le Fils de la Belle ant Bois Dormant is the title of this ingenious absurdity.