it4r Otatrts.
Mr. Toni Taylor's version of A Tale of Two Cities was duly produced at the Lyceum Theatre on Monday last; Madame Celeste, the lessee of the house, taking the part of Madame Defarge, the chieftainess of St. Antoine; a stately imposing figure, much as the Madame Defarge of Mr. Charles Dickens might be supposed to look. Moreover, an arrangement of the story, by which the incidents in Dr. Manette's narrative are con- verted into an introductory act, allows Madame Celeste likewise to re- present the dying sister, whom Madame Define was to avenge ; and her command of effective pantomime is turned to good purpose by her pro- phetic gesticulations in a strong moonlight. Generally, the characters, with which, of course, every reader is familiar, are well sustained. The veteran, Mr. James Vining, though he does not pourtray the gradual re- covery of Dr. Manette with all the forcible colouring bestowed by Mr. Webster on the hero of The Dead Heart, when placed in a similar posi- tion, represents it with a degree of care and earnestness which will sur- prise many who only recollect him as the representative of fops in the petites comedies, brought out at the Olympic in the days of Madame Vestris. Miss Kate Saville, the young actress who made her deblit at the Princess's, when it was first opened by Mr. Harris, plays Lucie Manette with much quiet pathos and truly ladylike propriety. Several other novices likewise give signs of an ability to recruit in some measure the declining companies of London. Mr. E. Villiers, who plays Sydney Carton, has an excellent stage face, and, in the scene where he changes clothes with Charles Darnay, most skilfully conveys the notion of calm determination surmounting the instinctive feeling of self-preservation. Less striking is the appearance of Mr. Forrester, who plays Charles Dar- nay; but he speaks well, and is evidently a pains-taking actor. But, in surveying the novices, do not let us forget the matured. Of rakes of high degree, Mr. Walter Lacey has long been the established representa- tive, and he is quite at home as the Marquis; while Mr. T. Lyon depicts, with evident gusto, the good humour and peculiarities of Mr. Lorry. The defect in the new play is the absence of those prominent charac- ters which so concentrate the attention of an audience that it never becomes merely discursive. Mr. Tom Taylor has done his best to bring into a compact form the incidents of a long and somewhat complicated story, confining the action to Paris, so that the tale is no longer of "two cities," but of one ; nevertheless, the closeness of a real drama is not quite attained, and we may doubt whether the plot would be perfectly clear to any one who had not read the book. On the revolutionary pictures great pains have been bestowed, and the Carmagnoli, by a mob disciplined into admirable disorder, will be new even to a public that has been fed high with the sans-culotte dainties of the Dead Heart at the Adelphi.
Previous page
