Covent Garden opened on Monday. An address in verse, pertinent
to the occasion, was delivered by the lessee, Mr. H. WALLACE: the points, at once pleasantly and forcibly put, were responded to by the audience,—who greeted with three rounds of applause the intimation that none but native talent was engaged. The new play by Mr. BOURCICAULT, called Woman, by way of giving it a taking title, met with a -very doubtful reception ; thagh quite as favourable as it deserved. It is much such another compound of theatrical reminiscences as the author's first production, London Assurance, except that it is serious and romantic, and not so cleverly put together. The persons—characters they are not worthy to be called—the incidents, and dialogue, con. totually remind one of other plays, but not at all of human nature ; the natural traits that distinguished their prototypes being either distorted or defaced in the process of transplantation. The materials thus collected are thrown together in a form intended to be effective ; but the utter want of coherence and consistency in the drama prevents their being so. We have a pair of sentimental lovers, who are made iniserable by an Iago ; and a pair of comic lovers, coarsely compounded of Beatrice, Benedick, and sundry others ; then there is a Jew sorcerer-ean outrageous exaggeration of Shylock—who out of pure hatred to Christians gratuitously deals out poisons for love-philtres, stipulating only to be allowed to watch their deadly effects ; and his daughter, -who is at once the agent and the frustrater of his malignant schemes. These persons are christened with historical names—such as Gaston de Foie, Giotto, Doris, and Cola ; and, for the sake of the claptrap, a young Italian lady, in the seventeenth century, is represented reading Shakspere at Genoa, and prophesying his future fame ! The scenes are planned with an eye to stage-effect : a painter's studio is succeeded by a carnival-scene, the dance being interrupted by a religious procession ; and the mysterious gloom of a magician's cell prepares the way for an Italian palace blazing with the lights of a festival. The situations too, are contrived with a view to impressiveness—though most unskilfully ; for the author, alike disregarding nature and probability, deprives them of the very elements of dramatic power. A husband in disguise keeps an assignation made by his newly-wedded bride, and hence infers her guilt ; though the conduct of her lively companion would alone suffice to convince the most conceited coxcomb that she has no part in keeping the appointment. Again, the Jew discovers that the girl he has poisoned is his own daughter, who had been saved from shipwreck when an infant ; but the pathos of the situation is totally destroyed through the obviousness of the device by which it is brought about. The most desperate effort to eke out a situation, however, follows this scene : the Jew places his seeming dead daughter in the arms of the first person who enters, while he goes to find an antidote to the poison ; and the Iago, seeing this, runs out and fetches her husband, pointing to it as a crowning proof of his wife's guilt. There are some clever turns of thought in the serious portion of the dialogue, and some smart retorts in the comic passages ; but of poetry, properly so called, we did not catch an original idea ; and the vivacity—it does not amount to wit—is alloyed by grossness too broad for farce. The stock phraseology of the old dramatists may serve to gild over forced conceits or mere commonplaces ; but it cannot conceal such palpable plagiarisms as that of Mercutio's description of Queen Mab, which Mrs. NISBETT utters.
The acting was, at any rate, equal to the play : the author has made it impossible for the best performers to produce any effect in the serious parts. Mrs. NISBETT, as the Beatrice of the piece, threw all her animal spirits into the part, and carried it through gayly,—though her musical laugh was so constantly in requisition that its mirthful chuckle became at last monotonous ; and WALTER LACY, who is the sport of her mischievous coquetry, is lively after a vulgar fashion. ANDERSON as the hugband, and PHELPS as the villain, never played with less effect, certainly; but the fault lay in the ineffectiveness of what they had to do—there i no scope for real passion. Miss VANDENHOFF as the wife took great pans ; but it is hard to say whether her declamatory manner or the want of interest in the character had most share in its failure.* VANDENHOFF'S ponderous style and lugubrious tones andoubtediy ccintributed to make the Jew's long speeches tiresome and his pathos ludicrous ; but this would have been less apparent had the sympathies of the audience been at all excited. As for Miss COOPER, who personates the Jew's daughter, she is little else but a puppet in sumptuous attire. Woman is splendidly put upon the stage ; and as a spectacle it is striking. Pity so much pains and expense should have been bestowed
on a piece that cannot live many nights. The audience, for a long time patient, began to give audible signs of weariness in the fourth act, when the interest, if there had been any, should have reached its climax ; and
at the fall of the curtain, when the manager announced the play for repetition, he was met by loud shouts of "No !" from the dissentients, who formed a very considerable minority.
The new farce, called My IT'ife's Out, is a very slight affair, and not very laughable either. KEELEY plays an amorous artist, who would fain make love to afemale " model ' when his "'wife's out," but is prevented and exposed by his maid-servant. Mrs. KEELEY as the " maid" sings a lament for the sorrows of a "servant-of-all-work," and enters heartily into the joke. The best part of the fun was the droll figure of KEELEY, in a short blouse, mounted on a pair of steps, painting an Actaeon, and disturbed while finishing the horns by misgivings of his wife's fidelity, and certain ominous flourishes of a French horn-player overhead. The Happy Man, an old Haymarket farce in which POWER used to play, introduced Mr. HAMILTON as the representative of Irishmen : a performer not without unction, though of a coarse kind.
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