16 FEBRUARY 1856, Page 11

it47 60pairt5.

While stoutly maintaining its dislike to the delicate cabinet-picture- painting manifested in the Boots of the Holly Tree Inn, the Adelphi au- dience welcomes, with all the delight proper to a pleasing contrast, a farce of much coarser material, entitled That Blessed Baby. The piece is clever enough in its way. Two domestics—male and female—marry during the temporary absence from home of an infant-hating master, become the parents of a strong-lunged offspring, and are unable to conceal the signs, audible and visible, of its existence, when the ruler of the house erturns. Their terrors and subterfuges are exhibited with undisguised force ; the father, played by Mr. Keeley, rather portraying the timidity of the culprit ; the mother, represented by Mrs. Keeley, giving more prominence to the strong parental sentiment. Jokes con- nected with the nursery can be appreciated by every sort of capacity ; and hence the dilemmas in which the piece abounds, rendered doubly ludicrous by the humour of the two artists, provoke an incessant roar. In the present adapting age, we shall be thought to utter something altogether incredible when we state that this farce is not taken from the French, but has been spun at first hand from the brain of a gentleman named Moore.