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THE only two noteworthy theatrical events of the past fortnight followed in most rapid succession. Mr. Webster, after closing the Adelphi with a speech in which he assured the audience that though the success of the season had been mainly based upon an illusion, it had been no illusion itself, re-opened the theatre in less than a week with a new drama, and introduced to the public, as a tragic actress in possession of her full powers, a lady who was only known to the English public as one of a family of " infant prodigies." Miss Bateman left England without leaving any decided impression as to her probable future. Since then her success in America has been marked and increasing, and especially so in the-character which she now appears in at the Adelphi.
Leah is founded to a considerable extent on Mozenthal's Deborah, an Italian version of which forms one of Ristori's most favourite dramas. The Adelphi version, though clumsily constructed in many instances, still presents many powerfully dramatic points, and is certainly well calculated to display Miss Bateman's peculiar powers. The scene is laid in a Styrian village towards the close of the last century, when many of the most barbarous laws of middle-age religious persecution were still enforced against Jews. A wandering family of outcast Israelites have been detected lurk- ing in the neighbourhood of a village equally remarkable for orthodoxy and superstition. The ignorant villagers, worked upon by the schoolmaster, whose excessive zeal for the faith is suspicious from the first, believe the Jews, in defiance of the law which forbad their residence in the empire, are in search of Chris- tian children to sacrifice at their mysterious rites. The family are in danger of dying from starvation in their hiding-place, when they are saved by Rudolph, the son of the village magistrate, who is attracted by the beauty of Leah. She, in return, loves him with intensity, and, notwithstanding her religious ties on one side and his father's anger on the other, they agree to fly together. The schoolmaster, however, who is in reality a renegade Jew, fears lest he should be recognized, and, by craft, induces Rudolph to believe that Leah has abandoned him for the sake of a heavy sum of money offered by his father, the truth being that the Jews, without Leah's knowledge, had thankfully ac- cepted money as enabling them to escape, and that the schoolmaster, being recognized by the patriarch of the family, had murdered him, and ascribed the death to lightning raging at the time. Leah, ignorant of what has occurred, is spurned by Rudolph, who believes her utterly faithless for the sake of gold, is threatened with the law by the magistrate, who believes her to be breaking the bond under which she had taken his money, and wanders out into the world, crushed with the blow, cast off by her nation, and in daily danger of her life from the people. Rudolph utterly casts from his heart all memory of the avaricious sorceress who, he believes, had thrown an unhallowed spell over him, and marries. On the day of the wedding he encounters Leah. She curses him with the whole aroused fury of her Hebrew nature, and leaves him senseless with horror. Years pass on, and Rudolph and his wife live happily, notwithstanding a lingering dread of the vengeance or the witchcraft of the Jewess. At length, though broken down by five years of wandering, Leah ventures back again to the Styrian village for vengeance. She is discovered, and only rescued from violence by Rudolph's wife. She accepts shelter, with the hope of in some way gratifying her long- cherished hate. While alone with Rudolph's infant daughter, medi- tating how she could best strike Rudolph through his child, she learns from the child's prattle that her name is Leah, that her parents constantly mourn for the wretched outcast Jewess, and, finally, on finding that Rudolph is even then absent on a mission of mercy on behalf of the Jews, she is gradually moved to relenting, and at last retracts her curse, and again goes forth as an outcast. She is seized, however, by the infuriated mob, and is only saved by the return of Rudolph. She lives long enough to denounce the schoolmaster as the renegade Jew, Nathan, and dies in the arms of Rudolph and his wife.
Such are the principal events of the drama, and it is easily seen how completely the interest turns on the part of the Jewess, sus- tained by Miss Bateman, and notwithstanding not a few defects and drawbacks, few more striking impersonations have been seen of late on the London stage. Miss Bateman's voice is far from being suited to a tragic actress, her accent is decidedly trans-Atlantic, and her long fair hair is certainly not in accordance with the cha- racter. But her acting throughout the many differing phases of the character is most powerful, and all criticism on minor points lost sight of in admiration of her genius. In the first act she appears only for a few seconds at its close ; but it is simply im- possible to doubt for one moment that a great actress is on the stage. Leah, threatened with instant death by the crowd, is only saved by the village priest, who lays his hand on her head and solemnly receives her under the protection of the crucifix he extends towards the people. She rushes to him for safety, and her wild shudder as she discovers that she owes her life to the hated image at once reveals her power. Her attitude alone, as she shrinks in horror from the emblem of persecution to her and her nation is marvellously grand. Her acting in the earlier scenes with Rudolph, full of Oriental poetic imagery, is of the highest kind, full of inten- sity, without an approach even to the ordinary rant of the stage. It is in the scene when she invokes the curse on Rudolph, perhaps, that she appears to the greatest advantage. Still mourning and heart- broken when she meets him, her fierce love suddenly turns into hate, and, as it changes, all the feelings of her creed and her race, so long overpowered by that love, as suddenly re-assert themselves. No mere rejected love turned into the bitterest hate could lend such tones to the voice as those in which she hisses the words " Miserable Christian I" at Rudolph. The grander, deeper, more enduring hate of a faith and of a race was needed. In the last act, where the determined purpose of years melts away before the influences of the approaching death of which she is conscious, the awakened reminiscences of her former love, and the scene of happiness she finds herself about to destroy, Miss Bateman shows herself truly a great actress throughout a long and most arduous scene.
The other characters in the piece were all creditably represented, but in no instance call for any special comment. The two or three attempts to introduce low comedy, in obedience to stage "tradi-
tions," however, are insufferable. AMATEUR.
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