6 OCTOBER 1860, Page 20

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The new piece with which Madame Celeste has inaugurated her new season at the Lyceum, and which is entitled-the Brigand and Ms Banker, is not in any way worthy of its author, Mr. Tom Taylor. He has en- deavoured to show in a dramatic form the peculiar vicissitudes incident to a tour through Greece, and as these alone would not furnish sufficient matter for a plot, he has blessed the brigand chief, who seriously impairs the pleasures of the tourists, with a daughter, who has fallen in love with one of the travelling party, and shows herself a guardian genius in the midst of ferocious demons. The entente cordiale which exists between the robbers and the police, whose duty it is to check these depredators, is exhibited with some humour ' • and the brigand chief, who has his Lon- don banker, and in the most business-like fashion divides his profits among the members of a joint-stock company, in which an officer of the police holds shares, is a very different being from the old-world robbers. who, ready with pistol and dagger, were slow at accounts. But the nu- merous characters want force, and the story lacks interest, while the satire is directed against a state of things far beyond the line of an ordi- nary public. Hence the work is but moderately successful. The Leclercq family appear at the Haymarket in a little semi-mytho- logical ballet, entitled Sun and Wind, and founded on the fable of YEsop that illustrates the superiority of gentle persuasion to brute violence.