At the Lyceum, last week, there was a new drama
by SEItLE, named The Witch's Son. It had a happy admixture of the serious and the comic ; though it was injured by the undue preponderance of a pathetic catastrophe. The reality with which Mrs. KEELEY expressed the emotions and suffering of an innocent and trusting girl, who is deceived and betrayed by a heartless profligate, gave interest to the pathetic por- tion of' the play ; which was strengthened by the spirit and earnestness of SERLE'S personation of the Witch's Son : while OXBERRY, as a clown, infected with an apprehension of the terrors of witchcraft, and W. BENNETT as a village doctor, with just cunning enough to hide hts ignorance, gave laughable effect to the comic parts. SALTER, as a pa- rish constable and cobler, was very amusing. The park scenery in that piece is charming : it almost makes one forget the stage lamps. WRENCH is the hero of an improbable but very droll farce, by the author of " The Mummy," called The Man about Town; in which hs personates one of those ambulatory advertisements, the heralds of trade, with pasteboard tabards emblazoned with " the learned pig" instead of a wild boar. The last new farce, The Gunpowder Plot, is contrived to give ano- ther no- ther opportunity for Mrs. NISBETT to put on male attire. Mrs. a- LEY, too, was dressed as a drum-boy, and made even the drum a source of fun. Mrs. NISBETT is also acting at the Strand Theatre. This week she dressed in widow's weeds, in a laughable little piece named Puy, the equivoque of which consists in her expressions of fondness for bet favourite lap-dog being mistaken for tender reminiscences of her de- ceased husband. Mr. HAmmosin is the hero of another new burletta, A Man for the Ladies: but his manner is too bard and robust for characters the hu- mour of which consists in their insignificance and self-conceit.
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