THE THEATRES.
g the postponement of Mr. TALFOURD'S Athenian Captive, Covent hy de has been suddenly thrown upon its reeourcesthough a • tr--11 musty Fs elapse till any of the forthcoming novelties can be few day' mus. y brought forward, the goodly array of " stock pieces "—the revivals of SHAksy EARE, with Ion, The Lady if Lyons, &c.—offer varied attrac- tio-n-icthat contrast with the stereotyped playbills of " the other 1,0 At Drury Lane, " toujours perdrix," in the shape of Mr. gfure.recr's opera and the Mellonians, has been the meagre fare for the het fortnight; and will continue to be till CHARLES KEAN return. 15ccently-dressed people, to act the part of " brilliant and crowded audiences "extempore, are, however, becoming scarce ; though the system of having paid performers before the curtain, and unpaid ones behind it, is elsewhere repudiated. We are glad to see a new play by SHERIDAN KNoWLES is a principal feature of the announcements at Covent
Garden.
Romeo and Juliet, as represented on Monday last, does not rank with the splendid restorations of StiegsrEaRE that have made MACREADY'S management an sera in stage annals : it was the garbled version, got up on the spur of the moment ; but was certainly played better than it could be at any other theatre, and nearly as well as it ever has been since the days of Miss O'NEue—for Miss FAUCIT'S Juliet is not much worse than Miss KEMBLE'S, and MACREADY'S Friar Lawrence is a set- off against CHARLES KEMBLE'S Mercurio. Mr. ANDERSON is the most youthful and graceful Romeo we have seen for many a day, and the only tolerable representative of the lover since CHARLES Ks:elm-Cs youth : his acting was judicious—and the "judicious " Romeo was mated with a "respectable" Juliet. Though, by the way, Miss HELEN FAucte, by substituting a mincing affectation of modesty for the confiding frank- ness of an ardent and generous nature, made Juliet's passionate avowal of her love seem rather immodest. She enacted the horrible imaginings that her misgivings conjure up in drinking the potion, as if she were actually in a state of desperation in the charnel-house. When Miss KERBER, in this scene, used to scream out with all her lungs, as Miss FACCIT did, the words "du—ash out my desperate brains," we always felt that the property.man had been remiss in not supplying an " an- re.toes thigh-bone " to suit the action to the word. MACREADY, as Friar Lawrence, made us feel for the first time the true value of that character: hitherto the Friar was a mere go-between on the stage, but now he appeared the faithful friend and mentor of Romeo not only joining the hands but linking the hearts of the young lovers.
Previous page
