CELESTE has found it expedient to have recourse to speech
in aid of her pantomimic powers; and in The Mother, a melodramatic piece written for her by JERROLD, and brought out at the Haymarket on Thursday, she speaks her broken English. Grief for the loss of an infant never seen, and believed to have died at its birth, is not the deepest and most lasting of maternal sorrows ; but the pathos is rein- forced by a fit of jealousy, producing a state of somnambulism, during which the mother holds a long conference with a gipsy, and learns that
the cause of her groundless jealousy is .no other than her own child that had been stolen front her ! This wakens her, as well it might; and the curtain falls on her transports of joy and affection.
We missed seeing the piece, but the daily papers bear testimony to the thrilling effect of CELESTE'S acting; though BUCKSTONE'S drollery seems to have been more heartily relished. The truth is, that CELESTE startles the audience too much : her pantomime is a succession of smart electric shocks, which jar the nerves, but do not excite the sm. pathies so powerfully as more subdued and gentle expressions of emotion.
The White Horse of the Peppers, with POWER to back him, is running famously. The fun consists in the dance that POWER, guised as an Irish bogtrotter, leads a Dutch officer who comes to take possession of his confiscated estate ; and who is glad to exchange his. newly. got lands for the " white horse of the Peppers" to carry him safely out of the country of bogs and botheration. Powen, of course, is in his element, and excites irrepressible mirth. WEBSTER also, as the perplexed Dutchman, contributes his share to. wards the humour of the piece.
Previous page
