SUMMER THEATRES.
THE performance of The 1174 to Keep Him, at the Haymarket, afforded us an opportunity of seeing Miss MavwooD, the young Ameri- can actress, in comedy. She played Mrs. Loventore, the fond wife, who
by her exiyeant tenderness drives her husband to seek relief from the cloying surfeit of conjugal felicity in the more exciting inquietudes of infidelity. Her sadness was too uniformly grave; wanting the delicate inflections, the flickering lights, that vary the shade of sus- picion; and her vivacity was deficient in the airiness and elasticity that give the light touches of artificial elegance to natural grace and good breeding : but her personation displayed so much of spirit and intelli- gence, as to interest beyond the more showy and factitious cleverness of the practised actress; and there were sufficient evidences of feeling and talent to promise high excellence as the result of matured skill and power.
FAR REN'S Sir Baskful Constant was never one of his happiest efforts: he is too shrewd and knowing for the doting old simpleton ashamed of his amorous weakness—vain of his young wife's fine person and fashionable connexions while affecting to discountenance her extrava- gance; and for him to be made the dupe of a fashionable libertine, seems preposterous. Coomai, as Lovemore, substituted studied coldness for the levity of indifference,—as though he intended to insult his wife, instead of merely neglecting her ; and his formal propriety of manner gave to his delinquencies au aspect of deliberate profligacy that was revolting. The play, indeed, is an imitation of the intriguing comedies of WYCHERLEY and CONCREVE, wanting the exuberance of wit and gayety that gild over the follies and vices of the characters and present a brilliant picture of the tinselled corruption that prevailed in the fashionable life of that day. Mr. WALTER LACY was a Brumuaa- gem Sir 13rilliant Fashion—all paste and brass.
In the farce—that laughable piece of equivoke, The Green-eyed Monster—the actors, before so hard, mechanical, and exaggerated— grimacing and gesticulating with painful efforts to produce an effect— were all ease and animation. Fanonx, as the jealous-patted old German Baron, was capital, in his broad-skirted coat, huge buckles, and table- cloth of a waistcoat ; and 13 CCKSTONE, as Krout, the caricature.of his jealous master, was glorious—a droll burlesque of Zanga. Miss TRAVERS, a debutante who played Lady Constant in the comedy, ap- peared to more advantage in the farce : her face, when animated, has a pleasing expression, and in person she is tall and genteel. A Mrs. DANSON, whom we just remember to have seen before, has a lady-like ease and grace of manner, and a sweetness of expressiou, that are quite fascinating; nor is she deficient in sprightliness and vivacity, though in person remarkably embonpoint. Her animation, however, is of look more than action—" her eye discourses ;" and her features being very susceptible of motion, the countenance is the mirror of the character. This is true acting—a style which is seen in perfection in Mademoiselle
MA It&
We strayed into the little Queen's Theatre—or the Queen's little Theatre—the other night, to see what was going on there ; andwerere- compensed for some acting not bad enough to be ludicrous, by the per- formance of a Miss Comm, the heroine of a melodrama so outrageously absurd, that to have created an interest in the character shows her to possess feeling and powers of a more than ordinary kind. Sheshas a deep, powerful voice, a fine eye, and graceful action ; and her style is energetic, yet free from exaggeration. Whether she possesses capa- bilities beyond melodrama, we cannot say ; but in that she shows supe- rior talent.
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