THE THEATRES. •
THE little Olympic is itself again. The mistress of the revels returned on Wednesday, and found her house filled to overflowing with friends, who hailed her reappearance with shouts of welcome that seemed as if they would never cease, and were renewed every time she came on the stage. VESTRIS must have felt, compensated for all her American an- noyances, in meeting once again " the old familiar faces." She looked well, but thinner than before ; and was of course in high spirits: the sight of her box-list, including half the peerage, would be a restorative.
-- --- The crowds that blocked up Wych Street before the opening of the doors would have filled two Olympics; and those who came to the boxes without having taken places considered themselves fortunate in getting a sight of the stage from the lobbies.
The new burlesque of Bluebeard is very pleasantly written, in verse; the puns and slang phrases told well with an audience predisposed to be
pleased ; and every allusion to the return of VESTRIR was eagerly -ap- plauded. The costumes are more superbly correct, and the scenic arrangements more complete, than at any theatre in London. Blue-
beard, though retaining all his awful attributes of beard, wives, and
scimitar, in flourishing condition, is a Turk no longer, and deposed from the elephantine state to which GEORGE COLMAN elevated him. He is re- stored. to his native country, Brittany ; and wears the costume of his age—
the fifteenth century : the tunic and robe, long-pointed shoes, and cap with streaming drapery, are picturesque substitutes for the flowing robes and majestic turban ; and the scimitar, though not of Oriental symmetry, is a no less formidable weapon. Maisie makes a magnificent and bashaw-like wife-slayer, and proposes for Fatima to the time of his own march, with a burden of " tol-de-rol-lol " in a style of peremptory impotence eminently ludicrous. VEsrais is Fatima, of course : and beautiful she looks in her bridal dress of Tudor fashion. Her blue- bearded bridegroom, Mr. Abomelieue, being called away in the middle
of the thYdaier dans«nt; she and " sister Anne," and the whole train of guests and pages, set off to explore the house, to the nursery-air
" Goosey, goosey, gander." The bride, however, enters the fatal 'blue chamber" alone : and there, instead of the ghastly trophies described in the story, the nineteen wives of Blnebeard are arranged, each with her bead under her arm ; and they kindly invite Fatima to join them and make up the score, the beads suiting the action to the word as they join in chorus to the tune of" Were a' noddin." The key turns blue as its master's beard ; and he looks bluer than either, when, after an in- terview parodying the handkerchief scene in Othello, the trembling Fatima gives it up to him. While the bridegroom is whetting his scimitar, and the bride is 'writing to her friends," sister Anne is on the turret, looking out for her two brothers in the Light Dragoons:" who are exssected by the railroad, but, owing to the train getting off the
line, are rather late : they"come running in, however, in time to rim through Bluebeard, and the scimitar foils without the lady's bead. Bluebeard is not killed though—only " run through his clothes " this is fortunate, for VEsTais says she hopes "to run hint through the season "—of which there can be little doubt.
Baouonast, as US/mirk-a-back, the Irish porter, is as brisk as Dublin stout ; Mrs. FRANKS is a very proper Sister Anne; and Miss AGNES TAYLOR sings a song as pretty as herself.
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