The Express.
London, England, 1866-10-22 00:00:00

Drama.

DRURY-LANE.
The perfermense and insonss of Goosod's opals of FU
at both our Italian Opera-horses in 1863 and IBM only
served to furnish two other distorted adaptations of
°oaths's poem, and ea &Walk, night the first honest at-
tempt to give the public an ungarbled though transposed
version of the great German ohmic was made at Drury-lane
Theatre. There can be little doubt that the succem of Man.
fred three years ago, whim the house was under the joint
management of Messrs. Falconer and Chatterton, has led
up to this production of Foust. There is an important
difference, however, between these two dramatic events.
Manfred was an undramatic poem, monotonous in tone,
with no variety of character, depending for its effect upon
the gloomy beauty of its soliloquies, and the scenic dis-
play that could be dragged into it. Such as it we,,
however, it was boldly placed upon the stage, without
any editing or adapting, to stand or fall by its own
merits or defects. It stood. Every word that the poet
wrote—good, bad, and indifferent—was scrupulously given
bytbe actors. Faust is a highly dramatic poem, ponsming a
variety of character, containing tragedy, comedy, and even
faros, and having a number of well-contrasted wanes. It
deals with living, breathing, men and women in streets
and market-places, and is not confined to the solitary
ruminations of a discontented hermit on the misty mountain
tops. With all these dramatic advantages, however, com-
pared with Manfred, Faust has not been pat upon the
Drury-lane stage in an unmutilated form, though the
version is more like the original then anything which has
yet been given to the English public, if we except a per-
formance a few years ago by the German company at the
St. James's Theatre. The adapter of Goethe's Faust at
Drury Lane is Mr. Bayle Bernard, a dramatist of great taste
and experience.
Two or three " incidental ballets" are introduced, and
the "transpositions "of the text are so numerous and so
ingenious in the early portions of the drama as to make it
almost impcssible to follow the original poem side by side
with the adaptation. The prelude in the theatre,
and the prologue in heavers, are, of course, left out ;
the study scenes combined in one shift backwards and
forwards, the scene before the gate is passed by, and is
combined afterwards with the Auerbach cellar scene and
the street scene in which Margaret is first beheld; the
witch's kitchen is cut out, several other scenes are treated
in the same way, but the adapter has retained the chain-
Ira scene, the garden same, the city fountain scene, and
the prison scene almost as they were written, sad has in-
troduced a version of the Walpurgis night's revelry which
has been made much of by the scene-painter, Mr. Bever-
ley, and the ballet-master. All such attempts to illustrate
a great poetical work are wanting in imagination, and are
far too much like the conventional openings of
pantomimes. The Walporgis night's revelry in Faust,
though theatrically effective, is open to this objection.
The German street scenes are all admirable and life-like,
and the garden scene, though not new, is an excellent piece
of painting. Retzsch's well-known outlines appear to have
been well studied by the principal performers, but we
think the dress of Mephistopheles might be improved with
advantage. There is too much of the French circus clown
about it to be picturesque, and Mr. Phelps would do well
to make his conjuring leas obtrusive. The piece is only
vulgarised by clawing the air to make " business," at the
back of the scene ; and the way in which Faustkets rid of
his cloak and beard, when he is transformed from age to
youth, i far too suggestive of pantomime. Mr. Phelps's
Mephistopheles is a dry and sarcastic, if not a forcible per
formance. Mr. Edmund Phelps is not a satisfactory Faust,
and Mn.s Hermann Verin's Margaret, a charming embodi-
ment of a charming character, wants nothing but real girl.
hood to save effort and render it perfect. A few more re
hearsals will bring out the strength of the chorus, and
help to make the drams that spectacular success which
Mr. Ohatterton deserves to have to repay him for his
enterprise. Its reception on Saturday night was very dif-
ferent from the first night's reception of Macfrol--it
was all enthusiasm, although the performance lasted four
hours.