AGE TABLEAUX—THE RENT DAY AND ROBERT THE DEVIL.
THE stage, in "holding the mirror up to nature," has too often shown us extravagant or distorted images; it is more successful in reflecting the productions of art, which it does with minute fidelity and living truth. Tableaux virauts, or animated pictures, are the order of the day; and the painter now shares the glory of success which was before divided between the actors and the dra- matist. WILKIE'S famous picture Of "The Rent Day," has given rise to a drama at Drury Lane, which is likely to vie with it in popularity, and which embodies the spirit of that admirable per- formance in a story of very great interest. Mr. JERROLD, the author, reads "a great moral leSson" to the absentee landlords, which we wish they could all peruse and profit by. The rising of the curtain discloses an animated realization of the picture of "The Rent Day;' and at the end of the first act, it falls upon ano- ther of the " Distraining for Rent." WALLACK and Miss PHIL- LIPS, as the distressed tenants—Coopzn, as the brother—HARLEM, as the broker, who, whether in love, liquor, or law, has always " an eye to business"—and YOUNGE, as the steward, who takes a sordid revenge upon the young heir for wrong done him by the former possessor—all exerted themselves most efficiently. Nor must we pass over H. WALLACK and BEDFORD, as two housebreakers of the true Jerry Abershaw school ; and BRINDAL as the squire, who, dressed in the costume of the last century, looked as though he had walked out of the frontispiece to one of the old novels. The Adelphi has also its tableaux; but they are the production of the stage-manager only, whose showy combinations fade before the sober truth of WILKIE'S pencil. In the Adelphi version of Robert the Devil, which is called The Devil's Son (a new rela- tion), people dream pictorial dreams and sec pictorial visions; and among other wonders of this diabolic pantomime, a whole ceme- tery full of sculptured nuns, looking like the petrifactions of an hospital of young ladies on reclining boards, rise up and move off. 'We know not whether this Adelphi spectacle resembles SCRIBE'S drama; assuredly it is guiltless of MAYERI3EERS music. The truth is, its merit consists solely in the dresses and machinery. When we would witness the glory and perfection of this clever company in action, we must still choose Victorine.
Previous page
