The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-31 00:00:00

" The Hunchback." She looked—to begin with—

charmingly.

She dressed the part with exquisite

,aste--her costumes being as various as they were

picturesque and some of them magnificent. But
it was, of course, the emotional genius apparent in
her acting of the character throughout, that
_ _

achieved for her that complete and absolute com-

mand over her audience which may, now, at length,
in our delightful remembrance of last evening, be

said to have securely established her reputation as
an actress of the highest powers. Her most enthu-
siastic admirers need no longer fear to be met
with the taunt that Miss Bateman is eminent only
in ,one character—that she has gained her extra-

ordinary popularity, here, by one solitary representa-
tion. To our own individual thinking, her Julia far

surpasses her Leah. Yet, while saying this, let us
acknowledge, at once, quite frankly, that, according

to our vie; of it as a dramatic production, the play
of " Leah "is just simply detestable. ThQ charac-
ter of Leah, even, in our eyes, although played by
__ _

Miss Bagman, and played, too, by her, as all the
London world of playgoers knows by this time, with

such impassioned intensity—the character of Leah,
we say, is, in our eyes, very nearly as odious as the
play itself. Only at the close of it—in our
own estimation, at least—was the drama of
" Leah" in any way really acceptable. Other-
wise, throughout the first four acts, we should
have been disposed to pronounce it, in the words of
Dogberry, " very tolerable and not to be endured."
The fifth act alone was (according to our judgment),

and this thanks solely to the genius of Miss Bateman,

the reclamation of both the drama and the character.

VVe forgot, then, the malignant spite of the mencli-

cant Jewess, in the earlier scenes, in the pathetic
tenderness of her dying prostration. With her
Julia, however, it is altogether different.
There, at least, we have nothing to for-
get or to forgive in that alternately charm-

ing, tender, radiant, agonised impersonation.
Besides—the character itself is one so inexpressibly

more agreeable to contemplate. It is no longer a
wandering mendicant, the creature of an alien race,
whose fortunes we are called upon--to follow

sympathetically—for the most part vainly, in our
own instance, again let us acknowledge it !
Julia, on the contrary, that spoilt child of fortune,
is from first to last what Leah never, even for one
single instant, affects to be—a lady ! And a
perfect lady, Miss Bateman is, as Julia, throughout.
But then, not only the two characters, but the two
dramas are so widely contrasted! Listening to the
words of " The Hunchback" we are listening to a
dramatic production which is, in its way, part and
parcel of our national Literature not to the
tawdry rubbish of an evanescent melodrama, one
that partakes not in the least of the cha-
racter, one', that participates, not in the
smallest degree, in the dignity, •of any lite-
rature under the sun. Occasionally, even, we
need not hesitate to assert, that the text of " The
Hunchback," as indeed, not unfrequently happens in
others of the dramas of Sheridan Knowles, rises to the
elevation of true poetry. As a revival of one of our
legitimate modern dramas, this representation of
Sheridan Knowles's truly admirable drama of " The
Hunchback,"—particularly as it is now put
upon the stage of the Adelphi Theatre—is
an incident to be hailed, as we for one do certainly hail
it, with the very liveliest satisfaction. It was
a matter of regret to us last evening that the enter-
prising manager was not himself present—by the
accidental Circumstance, as we learnt, of his having
been snowed up somewhere in Wales—that he him-
self was not there present in the house, so that he
might with his own eyes have witnessed the brilliant
success achieved by this revival of " The Hunchback"
under his management. Scenery, dresses, appoint-
ments—all were perfectly new and of such unmis-
takeable excellence that the audience could
see at a glance, for themselves, at -every
turn, that, as had for some weeks previously
been announced by advertisement, no ex-
pense had really been spared under Mr.
Webster's management, with a view to
render this reproduction of " The Hunchback "
worthy of it as a dramatic masterpiece. But what
is far more worthy of note, the parts in this new
cast of " The Hunchback " proved to have
been admirably distributed. There was not
a single character in the piece that was not
thoroughly well represented. Mr. Swinbourne's
Master Walter—from whose dorsal defor-
mity the play takes its title, a character
assumed, it may be remembered, by the dramatist
himself upon the occasion of the play's first repre-
sentation in 1832 upon the boards 'of Covent Gar-
den—was not simply carefully studied and eminently
judicious throughout, but was here and there dis-
tinguished by singular animation, and once or twice
even by a pathetic tenderness that fairly carried
his audience with him. Mr. Jordan we do not re-
member to have ever seen to so much advantage as
in Sir Thomas Clifford. He not only looked the
character (very handsomely!) but played it with real
ability throughout. Mr. Toole's Fathom, quite as
a matter of course (small though the part is in
itself) was another of that inimitable low comedian's
triumphs of comic impersonation. The scene be-
tween Fathom and Thomas, the London footman
(grotesquely portrayed, this latter, by Mr. Romer)
was one series of explosions of laughter from be-
ginning to end. Apart, however, from the great
scenes of the play—meaning those in which Julia,
Master Walter, and Sir Thomas Clifford, are the
chief interlocutors—the most brilliant triumph
of the night (apart, remember ! from those great
scenes) was that riant, sparkling, thoroughly ex-
hilarating scene—scene the first in the fourth act,—in
which Helen schools Master Modus in " The Art of
Love," not according to Ovid ! Mr. Billing-
ton (always a favourite with the Adelphi audience)
was the ultra-modest lackadaisycal Master
Modus—Miss Henrietta Simms being the charming,
delightful Helen of the occasion ! Miss Simms's
performance of Helen last evening, but more par-
ticularly in that scene, as also in the sequel to it,
viz., the first scene in the fifth act, may be set down
at once, as, beyond all question, the greatest hit
that pretty young actress has yet achieved since
the occasion of her first stepping before the London
footlights. We not only congratulate her very cor-
dially upon this, but we feel that we ought, in simple
justice to her to mention the,fact that she was, during
the evening, twice recalled by acclamation—hand in
hand, of course, with her companion, Master Modus.
Even an insignificant character like that of Lord
Tinsel was, in the cast of last night, so very happily
touched off—with an air of such deliciously absurd
nonchalance—by Mr. Ashley, that it seems here
to claim, at least, one word of honourable
mention. The heroine of the night and of the play,
the observed of all observers, the one bright particular
star of the occasion—among all that moving group
of Her Majesty's Servants, as they were wont to be
called in the old-fashioned language of the playbill—
was, naturally and inevitably, by right of her genius,
by right of her many rare qualifications as an
actress, not excepting even from among these her
classic profile and her chiselled features—Miss Bate-
man, as the Julia in this really admirable cast of
"The Hunchback." Her triumph, in the represen-
tation of that character, in all its grace ' and
tenderness, in all its espieglerie in the garden
scene when she is toying with the feather,
in all its pathetic anguish in the draw-
ing-room scene, now alone, now with Mas-
ter Walter, now with Sir Thomas Clifford,
was—we would here emphatically repeat what we
have already said—a triumph complete and legiti-
mate. It was a triumph so unmistakeable of its
kind from first to last, that it at once securely
consolidates her reputation. At the fall of the
curtain she was recalled again and again—re-
ceiving a thunder of applause from all
parts of the house, as well as a plentiful shower
of bouquets from the stage boxes on either
hand. The theatre itself was filled from floor to
ceiling, and the audience never flagged in the evi-
dence of its appreciation of a performance that
(speaking for ourselves) was thoroughly enjoyable
from the rise to the fall of the curtain—not a single
momentary hitch of any kind marring the effect of
the first night of this revival of " The Hunch-
back." It was an evening that was really a treat
to old blase playgoerf?