CHARLES ManiEws's powers of personation are brought to the test
in the new burletta, called Car/o, er tile ileich.thg, produced at the Olympic on Thursday. Cam o is not of the egnine race, but an idiot biped, who fills the post and the kennel of ids quondam play- mate the quadruped, as the guardimi of a deserted chateau, belonging to an emigrant family, of whom the idiot boy turns out to be the lost heir. The interest of the ieve centres in this character, and its suc- cess is entirely dependent on the clever acting of Marnews. His performance as a whole is imperfect,—wanting unity and indivi- duality of character : but there are parts of it that cannot be surpassed. The various traits of imbecility, am' the fitful gleams of memory that dart through the enfeebled brain of the idiot, are depicted with painful truth: but he is not throughout the crazed boy. The va- cant, listless, wandering, purposeless air, are %I-maims—especially at those times when he has nothing to do. The mimicry of the actions and external manner of the. idiot is admie ble—fLr mimetic power is Maragws's forte : but the spiiit of the character, that should combine the scattered parts and int use life and reality into them, is not there. The performance is a eoligerks of little points, many good and some faulty. As the actor becomes inure at home in the part, be may be able to fuse them into one mass. The scene where he is introduced into the apartment of his study when a boy, and his recollection of his father and the old tutor revives, was touching; though the moping and mowing at the nodding mandarin was a little overdone. Why he should faint at discovering his father's sword in its place of concealment, does not appear, unless to give effect to the abrupt termination of the piece—which took everybody by surprise. KEELEY contrived to throw some drollery into the character—or ca- ricature rather—of a broken-down barber, who passes himself off as the lost heir by defrauding the idiot of sonic tinnily documents : but the attempt at a plot fails in adding to the interest, and creates but little fun.
Previous page
