THEATRICAL NOVELTIES.
THE entertainments at the two most popular little theatres, the Olympic and the Adelphi, present a striking contrast. At both, 'hey are excellent of their kind; the companies complete, the act- ing of the best, the getting up of the pieces admirable ; and there is a perpetual succession of novelties, which draw crowds to each. The Adelphi is crammed like a cockpit; and the excitement is, generally, akin to that of the cockpit. YATES makes his cup of enchantment thick and turbid with the dregs of human nature. VESTRIS'S sparkles with the light froth on the surface of society. The Olympic burlettas are droll and pleasant adventures drama- tized, in which figure our acquaintances of yesterday, whom we are surprised to find require so little caricaturing to render them amusing. Their follies and foibles are pleasantly ridiculed ; smart equivoque and harmless jests are exchanged; the fun is good- humoured, and the drollery decorous; the accessaries of the scene are tasteful and elegant, as in a drawing-room ; VESTRIS is the gay and charming hostess; and we come away exhilarated as from a lively party. The Adelphi dramas are made up of scenes from VIDOCQ, FAUBLAS, and the Newgate Calendar. They deal in vices, crimes, and retribution. The heroes are gaol-birds, outcasts, or libertines. The interest is mostly of the painful sort : practical jokes, coarse banter, malicious sneers, and low buffoonery, consti- tute the chief part of the amusement. The scenery and dresses are rich and expensive; but they satiate, like the decorations of the public saloons. The dramas are hastily got up, and acted, as it were, at sight. They are rough exaggerated outlines in char- coal, with a glare of effect dashed in rapidly. But, as the vivid pictures on French paper-hangings attract the eye of hundreds who would pass by more delicate sketches or finished paintings, so are the Adelphi entertaintiaents a welcome stimulus to the grosser palates, which prefer Torn and Jerry to Olympic Revels, and the squalid horrors of Fictorine s dream to the relief of her waking to a sense of its unreality. YATES is as successful in pleasing one taste in playgoers as VESTRIS is another. The town has its Tothillfields and its May Fair, its gin-shops and its cafes, its night-cellars and its soirees. The amateur of " Life in Lon- don " visits all in turn.
. The novelty of .the week at the Adelphi is called The Victim, or the Law in 1650; and is Made up of smuggling, robbery, murder, and burning at the stake! That at the Olympic, entitled Fighting by Proxy, only has a duel, and that an imaginary one. Yet, strange to say, we laughed almost as much while we "supped full of horrors" at the Adelphi, as when we enjoyed the pleasan- tries at the Olympic. Not merely at " Glorious John," who re- lieved us of some of the weight of the calamities of the piece by his spontaneous drollery, but at the extreme wretchedness of the heroine and the .ultra-sillany of the sordid wretch of a lover, which went beyond the sublime into the ridiculous. This is the story. The Victim of the Law is Mrs. YATES, of course, and YATES is her lover,—a reckless " ne'er do weel," who, after coaxing her in vain to rob her mother, not only plunders but murders the old woman. The daughter is suspected, upon no other grounds than having in her hand the bloody knife which she had snatched from the assassin ; and is condemned to be burned at the stake. When the murderer is taken, he asks for an interview with the wretched girl, for the mere purpose of telling her he will not save her by declaring her innocence. She is brought to the stake, and the fagots are actually set fire to ; but at that moment she is saved by the production of the murderer's confession. Charitably wishing to save her character, though he would not save her life, he had written and sealed up the declaration of her innocence, and left it with directions that it should not be opened until two days after- wards : in his hurry, he enclosed a sheet of blank paper instead of the confession, which is found in his cell. This very probable inci- dent is an appropriate wind-up to the piece. We were very much edified by the morality of a smuggler,—O. Smiles of course,—who, in order to secure the Services of YATES for his gang, makes him drunk, robs him at cards of all his property, and of more money which he lends to him, and then compels him to repay it by threatening his life. To make up this sum, YATES robs and mur- ders his sweetheart's parent—a favourite refinement in crime at the Adelphi : but the virtuous smuggler refuses to take the "price of blood' "—having the day before threatened to have blood as the price of money. This is Adelphi morality-. We have heard of honour among thieves; sentiment among cut-throats is of stage origin.
The dresses of the piece and the date in the bills indicated the action of the story to belong to the seventeenth century ; but the dia- logue and its allusions were of the most approved modern fashion; and REEVE, as a drunken waiter, cracks extempore jokes in the Cockney lingo of the present day. He has nothing to do but to pretend to drink, and sing a parody of "Sweet Home" in praise of ale. The best test of his humour is, that he makes the stale Joke of appearing to drink more out of a jug than it can possibly hold, really tolerable. But we laughed at him and his tricks, not at the character. There was a pretty scene of a granary set out fora rustic fate with garlands of flowers and hoops stuck full of candles ; and a morris-dance, which was capital, and worth all the rest—neither Covent Garden nor Drury Lane can boast any thing equal to it.
Limes and KEELEY are the two heroes of the Olympic bur- letta, Fighting by Proxy. They are rival candidates for the hand of a young lady, who prefers a gallant captain to either of them. The favoured lover, with the aid of a. fellow-soldier, embroils them with each other ; and before they are well aware of it, they find themselves the principals in a duel, to take place Man hour. What little courage they fancied they possessed, soon begins to ooze out ; and each is glad to compound for his share in the matter by en- gaging, unknown to the other, the captain's friend to fight for them. They hear the report of the pistols; and their proxy communicates to them separately, that he has killed his man ! The captain secures the lady; and the alarm of his rivals at being apprehended, and their remorse at being the occasion of an opponent's death, is dissi- pated by their running into each other's arms in escaping from their places of concealment. The farcical character of the inci- dents and situations was admirably kept up by the acting of LISTON and KEELEY. KEELEY'S impotent swagger and bluster, yield- ing to the-qualms of terror at the idea of being.shot at—his chuck- ling at the notion of having a soldier to fight for him, and consi- derately requesting his proxy to he merciful to his antagonists= and then the helpless state of dismay to which he is brought by hearing of the death of his rival ; contrasted with LISTON s supe- rior braggadocio garnishing his misgivings with a semblance of courage, till he almost believed himself capable of going out—his quiet satisfaction at being relieved by his proxy—and his absolute sickness of horror and fright when he hears of the fatal result— was a rich combination of the ludicrous. The two characters, so much alike, placed in the same situations, and experiencing similar sensations, yet differently affected, heightened the humour to a most exquisite pitch.
VESTRIS is to be the heroine of a new burletta, called the Welsh Girl, to be produced on Monday.
We have not seen Jonathan Bradford at the Surry; though we have the Wife and the Hunchback at the Victoria. We are glad to find also that these two delightful plays attract audiences as numerous and more attentive than does the Old Bailey tragedy of the other place. •
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