The Press. — London, England, 1855-12-29 00:00:00

111 DECEMBER 29, 1855. It mustmt Os, fr. THE PANTOMIMES. ADELPHI. COVENT-GAIIDEN THEATRE. THE promise of the Great Wizard that " The Pantomime " of the season should be found inside the Italian Opera-house, has been but partially ful filled, for, while everything else is good, scenery, tricks, changes, and acting, the dialogue is intolerably bad from beginning to end. There are no " quips and cranks " here, no flying hits at the follies of the . day, no wit, no fun, nothing but a series of the most inevitable commonplaces, and one or two indifferent songs without point: This is much to be regretted, and we apprehend that the Wizard finds it more difficult to transform a dull dialogue into a witty one than he does to turn a policeman in high-lows and all out of a deal table, or he would have effected the change after the first rehearsal. The story is founded on the visit of bluff King Hal to Francis the First. The embarkation of the King, his voyage across the Channel, the meeting of the sovereigns, the grand tournament in honour of the visit, and ibe intrigues of both Kings to get possession of a pretty little danseuse, form the incidents of the story. Throughout all these adventures, an evil gnome is .tiontinually striving against a fairy, Good Humour, to breed jealousy and hatred between the two kings, and thus destroy " Ye belle Alliance " of the two countries. .This tendency of the gentleman in black and spangles leads in the commencement to some •ery pretty and effective dioramic representations of the then future visits of Napoleon the Third to Windsor, and of Victoria to the first Napoleon's tomb in the Invalides. The gnome, however, is in no way con -vinced by this practical prophecy of the fairy Good .Humour, and continues his annoyances throughout -.the piece. As soon as King Harry has made up his mind to pay his visit to Francis, accompanied by Wolsey and the Queen, be embarks at once on board his big /ship, and while enjoying himself, and indulging his .courtiers with a dance on board, the ship is sud .dettly,eaught in a heavy squall, which blows over board .ere incautious courtier who put up his xnuhreharte keep the rain off, and inflicts sea-sick ness and itllits attendant calamities, without much respect to persons, upon King, Cardinal, and Court. At length tCalais is reached in safety, and the Wield of .the Cloth of Gold is shown, where aminiarnents and dances have been specially insti anted 'by Francis for the amusement of his guests. ,its -soon as these ceremonies are concluded, the imetereigns retire to their chambers for the night. Dnt the beauty of a danseuse keeps kings awake at times, and, despite the charms of their legitimate queens, Heavy and Francis both take off their boots, and in the dark seek the abode of the pretty dan seuse. Here the evil gnome finds a most fitting opportunity for creating jealousy, and awakening the spouses he informs them each of their husband's absence and errand. The queens arise in haste and nightcaps, and, searching for their liege lords, arrive at the spot just as Henry and Francis, having .climbed the hedge surrounding the cottage of the .danseuse, fall each into the cucumber-bed and the pigsty on the opposite side. The denouement is corn plete, and a catastrophe would be inevitable did not the fairy Good Humour kindly come upon the scene, sand with a wave of her wand transform the cottage to the Realms of Eternal Starlight, and their kings sand ,courtiers into Harlequin and his attendants. ll'hen.oommences the harlequinade, which, with a little .oesnprersion, will be unexceptionable. The icidke !au& transformations are clever and original, and are :admirably managed throughout; nothing could be better, and if things went a little ruggedly on the first night, a week's practice will, no doubt, bring all to perfection. It is impossible in a panto mime of such length to particularise each scene and incident. There are many good points in the pan tomime, particularly the scenery, in which the changes are remarkably skilful and clever, and only .one bad one, easily corrected—the dull dialogue. If a little more wit and fun and a few more hits were thrown into it, and the whole thing compressed, it -would work admirably, The Clown, ?,Ir. Flexmore, is one of the cleverest and most amusing we have ; his imitations of the Opera dancers are perfect, and his extravagant activity and tun are carried out with great success. The house on boxing-night was crowded with an -audience as ill-tempered as impatient, and little allowance was made for difficulties, the inevitable .consequenee of too little time for preparation. However, the pantomime of Ye Belle Alliance will well repay a visit, and we have no doubt will achieve in a marked degree the success it so well deserves. OUR old friend "Jack," and his wonderful "Bean. stalk," furnish the material for an exceedingly lengthy and very tiresome cAmbination of burlesque and pantomime at this house. Jack at the Adelphi THE PRESS. is Jack of all trades, and consequently, in obedience I to the dictates of the old proverb, master of none ; for, in spite of some very good singing from Miss Mary Keeley in the burlesque, and some excellent harlequinade from Madame Celeste in the panto mime, the whole went "tardily off," and fell very tamely even on an Adelphi audience at Christmas. The burlesque opens with a conversation between Mother Goose (Miss Wyndham)—to whom one might, with perfect justice, though perhaps not with perfect propriety, apply the endearing term which Mrs. Corney employed in favour of Mr. Bumble before their union, so charming a " Dame" did she appear— Burlesque (Miss E. Arden), and Old Adelphi Panto mime (Mr. Saunders), the spirits of past burlesque being passed in review before them. It is discovered that the father of Jack, a Sir Gilbert Something (Mr. Bland), has been carried off by order of the giant,Grim Griffinhoof, to whom he has been compelled to become gamekeeper, the duties of the office consisting in pro viding a gentleman per diem for the giant's larder, on pain of death to the purveyor in case of failure. After a lapse of sixteen years, we find the knight's son Jack grown up into a "great, big, lubberly boy," mamma's darling, and as perfectly useless to her and the rest of the world as such young gentlemen always are ; the cow, on which the two depend for their support, is allowed to starve, while Jack amuses himself by blowing bubbles and laughing at his mother. To crown all, he is " done "by a gambling butcher out of the animal in return for a bean ; and matters appear to be at their minimum of badness, when Mother Goose makes her appearance, and per suades him to plant the bean forthwith. This "plant" succeeds ; as we all know, the bean springs up with the velocity of the electric telegraph, or a young lady's friendship, and soon forms a ladder between terra firma and Snowland, where Griffinhoof resides. Jack ascends the beanstalk, persuades his father, the Spirit of the Harp (Miss M. Keeley), and the Spirit of the Golden Hen (Miss K. Kelly), to escape from their bondage during Griffinhoofs drunken slumbers, and, having reached the earth in safety again, just in time to avoid the giant's paws, cuts down the beanstalk and finishes the monster's career for good. The giant's fall terminates the burlesque, which, though smartly written in parts, is much too long, and was only saved from disapproba tion by the very excellent singing of Miss M. Keeley. The introduction is carefully composed, however, and contains some happy allusions to daily topics, among which a neat description of seaside lodging houses may be especially mentioned, but as a whole the dialogue is not lively, and wants point; in deed the burlesque presents few attractions, consi dering its length, except the songs, which are all well chosen and very tastefully sung. The giant Griffinhoof is played by Mr. Paul Bedford— or Mr. Bawl Bedford, us he might with great propriety be nicknamed who materially adds to the heaviness of the piece by a larger in dulgence than usual in his ponderous style of comi cality ; he failed, however, to raise a laugh even in his Adelphi admirers. Jack, in the burlesque, is asssigned to Madame Celeste, who, having nothing at all to do in the character, did it to perfection ; in which she was assisted by Mr. James Bland, as the unfortunate gamekeeper. The scenery is only tole rably good—the seaside scene in the opening of the burlesque being about the best executed of the whole. OLYMPIC. A FAIRY extravaganza, the plot of which professes to be taken from "L'Adroite Princesse," in "Lee Contes de la Mere the," alias "Mother Goose," in the neat verse with "rhymes as pat as butter," as Leigh Hunt says, for which Mr. Pianche is so famous, forms the " excellent substitute" for a pantomime at this pleasant little theatre. King Gander (Mr. Emery) being about to proceed to Palestine for the laudable purpose of knocking on the head people entertaining religious opinions opposed to his own, is desirous of insuring the good behaviour of his three daughters, Babilliarda (Miss T. Ternan), Idelfonza (Miss Marston), and Finetta (Miss Julia St. George), during his absence. His ministers being unable to suggest anything satisfactory, Mother Goose pre sents him with three glass distaffs, one for each of his daughters : every one of these distaffs pos sesses the remarkable property of coming to pieces on the commission of the slightest peccadillo by its owner, so that their preservation, of course, affords a satisfactory certificate of " good conduct" in every case. To make assurance still more certain, the King confines the young ladies in a tower, the en trance to which is completely built up, provisions being sent up to the inmates by means of a rope and basket. Into this basket, however, Prince Rick-raft, the elder son of Fogrunt, an ancient foe of Gander's, manages to persuade Babilliarda to allow him to enter, in the disguise of an old ballad-singer. The consequences may be easily foreseen: he discovers himself, the distaffs of Babilliarda and Idelfonza "go to smash," and be commences an onslaught on the affections of Finetta, in which, however, he is completely foiled by the influence of Mother Goose, 1241' and the lady's own remarkable discretion, aided by a pretty strong personal dislike to the ill looking little Prince himself. In the end Finetta, after the regular number of narrow escapes, misinterpretations, and alternations between utter despair and all but per fect felicity, marries Richcraft's younger brother, who, as an unknown knight, has been the means of saving the life of the great Gander himself in the Holy Land. Mr. Robson acts Prince Richcraft with that mix ture of burlesque and tragedy that has become habitual to him. How he manages to survive the tortures to which he is a constant victim, with only a temporary lesion to his brains and his breeches as the last result of all his ill-luck, passes our compre hension entirely, but such is the dramatic fact. The parodies of different well-known bits from Othello, Hamlet, Szc., give the actor ample oppor tunity for introducing some very good imitations of the usual serious stage-versions of the original pas• sages. Thus, where Prince Richcraft's wits give way, overpowered by the combined effects of atumble down a trap-door, a long rumble through a drain, and a roll inside a spiked tub over a rather rocky district, he bursts out into the " high rage" of Sir Giles Over reach with considerable effect : indeed, but for the obvious fun of the matter, the intensity of the actor's manner would render the whole scene almost tragic. The most laughable piece of caricature, however, is the imitation of that well-worried unfortunate, the ghost in the Corsican Brothers, speaking a parody of the speech of Hamlet's father. Burlesque could hardly go further than this ; and when Mr. Robson vanished from the scene, suddenly changing the sDlemn slide sideways, with which the ghost's exit is performed, into one of his odd kangaroo attitudes, the enjoyment of the audience reached its highest point, some enthusiasts in the higher regions voci ferously insisting on an encore. The dialogue is neatly written, and the puns, though not very new nor very numerous, are most of them good and readily seen—a great excellence in the pun theatrical, where the course of the dialogue hardly allows time for consideration. There is, however, too frequent a reiteration of old plays on words. " The man who would make a pun would pick a pocket," said surly Dr. Johnson, and burlesque writers very often verify the proposition by constantly picking the pocket of some other person of the puns which they palm off for their own. The author of "Aspen Court" would have a statue erected to the man who should tell a perfectly new story. If the value of the reward deserved ought to be proportioned to the rarity of the quality commemorated, the burlesque writer who would make a perfectly new pun should have a statue in every square in London. The scenery was very pretty, and the dresses and other appointments in excellent taste. Miss St. George and Miss Ternan contributed very materially to the agreeable impression left by the whole by their goo:I singing, and Miss Marston by her good looks. The piece was perfectly successful. KILBL•RN'S VIEWS IN THE CRIMEA. -A series of beautifully-executed photographs, including the in terior (of the Redan, the Malakoff, panoramas of Sebastopol from the Itedan and Malakoff, &c., is at present exhibiting at Mr. Kilburn's photographic rooms in Regent-street. As specimens of the art of photography, they are far superior in clearness and sharpness of outline, and fulness of detail, to those specimens lately exhibited by Mr. Fenton. In many instances, no doubt, the much greater proximity to the objects represented which is now attainable, and the absence of disturbing causes in the shape of shot and shell, have contributed to the success of the artist, but in the majority we imagine that greater experience and carefulness have been the efficient causes of the excellence of these highly interesting pictures. The most successful of the series are the views of the interior of the Russian works, the details being reproduced with a fidelity and minute ness which brings the reality before the mind with wonderful force and truth. The panoramic views of the town are well worthy of study; for no verbal description can give any adequate idea of the frightful ruin and devastation in the southern side of Sebastopol. A vast wilderness of' shattered walls, torn and wrenched asunder as if by some tre mendous convulsion of nature, it fills even the spectator of its photograph with a sense of desolation which no words can possibly express. But turn from one of these views to that of the Cemetery on Cathcart's Hill, with its simple and touching memorials—the well-known names are all clearly legible in the photograph—and our natural and irrepressible regret at the terrible effects of war in the ruined town is forgotten in a moment, in our sorrow for the noble hearts which have found their last resting-place here, for the honoured lives of public usefulness and gallant service which the rude stones commemorate, thickly crowded over this narrow strip of rugged soil. There is something in expressibly touching in this little picture, something too which rouses a save indignatio, that even a leisurely contemplation of the opposite silo of the