30 JANUARY 1830, Page 7

FRENCH PLAY.

THE performances of the season commenced on Friday, with POTIER in Le Centenaire and Le Bourguernestre de Sardam. POTIER'S style is so well known to the English public, as to render any general de- scription of it superfluous ; and there is nothing in either of the two pieces we have named which allows of particular notice. The accom- plished comedian's personation of the Centenaire, in the first, is of wonderful truth to nature ; but the extreme feebleness of advanced age is not an agreeable exhibition on the stage, and no art can reconcile us to it. At the Bourguemestre de Sardam, people laughed so heartily and unintermittingly, that we could scarcely follow the dialogue of the scene. At the French Play, the practice is to laugh at every word that is understood ; and when a performer says oui, non, Monsieur, or Madame, the grateful sense of comprehension signalizes itself in a burst of laughter. In the secondary parts, there is the respectable de- gree of skill usual on the French stage. If the proprietors would employ some of the persons admitted to the boxes, to sweep the crossing before the theatre, they would render a double service to the public,—first, by relieving the visitors of the house of the presence of many rude and shabby people, who stand up with their hats on, sprawl in and out, banging benches, and never shut- ting box-doors ; next, by removing a bar of mud which extends from Catherine Street to the ruins of Exeter Change, and renders the ap- proach to the house from the other side of the Strand an affair of infi- nite nastiness.