The Sun.
London, England, 1862-08-12 00:00:00

NEW ADELPHL

MISS AVON IA JONES.

In this age of hard reality, an ids. 11 actress is a
wonder that startles the public with its novelty as
much as it attracts them with its power. She re-
scusitates a faith which, whilst it at once subdues
their sympathies, has to struggle with associations
that direct them to an adverse shrine. They are
like the Greeks that we read of in the traves of
Anarcharsis, who, after a long sojourn in sensuous
Egypt, landed in Crete, and suddenly found them-
selves in the presence of a statue of Athene. Nor
can this surprise when we remember that the entire
tendency of modern taste is to contract the imagi-
nation. Our realism, which is so devoted to a
purely material development, acquires its force by
limitation—by concentrating the mind on the
merely special and external to the exclusion of the
life beneath, of which they form but the mere
sheathing. Our industrial science would have no
energy for the great task it is engaged upon but
by forcing us into a momentary forgetfulness of
the end for which its task is given. Thus it is the
outward life of our time that we are drawn to as the
all important—t hat we analyse respect and magnify
—under every prompting of our immediate progress
and thus it is that art, succumbing to an influence,
which it is its duty and purpose to oppose, sinks
into the mere handmaid and minister of the senses
—not the soul. Our fiction sinks into mere manner
painting—and our painting into mere photograph-
ing. The whole tendency of such a system is to
propose finish instead of force—is to put form in
the place of spirit—and a mere definite exactness
in that of a true imagination. Nevertheless, the
soul that may be hidden is not extinguished by such
a system. That which is enduring in the heart of
man is not exploded by its casual needs or its ac-
cidental passions. The life that beats in it now is
the same that beat in it—whether in classic or bar-
baric times—and must continue unchanged to ani-
mate it—up to the last hour of its history. When-
ever this life then is addressed, however slightly,
it responds with a throb as genuine as can
possibly evoke it. Whether it be a picture,
poem, or piece of acting that speaks to the
human soul, the human soul proclaims their
affinity in no uncertain sound or movement. The
heaviest cloud that slumbers in the heavens has but
to be touched by the electric current and it gives
forth a sudden light, as deep, and brilliant as it
receives.

It was on these grounds we were sincerely pleased
during the autumn of the past year with the debut
of Miss Avonia Jones on the boards of Drury-lane.
We could not but feel that she was an actress of
true ideal power, who could speak at once to the
deepest recesses and finest sympathies of our com-
mon nature, by means of a passion profound and ab-
solute, which acted at once on the imagination. We
were not insensible to the physical advantages
which nature had added to her mental—the noble
voice, the expressive face, and the delicately
rounded person which was so capable of respond-
ing to all the promptings of her sense of dignity
and grace. Nor at the same time were we blind to
the few defects which, owing to an insufficient
amount of art, were capable of abating to a certain
extent the due impression of her powers. We could
not but regret a little excess in the modulation of
her superb voice which aimed at a rythmical
effect that was scarcely consonant with passion,
and of an occasional delay at her great moments
—her wonderful leaps into intensity, which gave a
fatal air of preparation to many of her best im-
pulses. These defects, however, admitted—and
the more readily because so removable, we could
not but feel that this young lady was gifted to
speak with a force and truth such as our stage had
not heard for many years, and which, in a period
like the present, so intensely sensuous and eater
nal, was not more striking for its rarity than wel-
come for its testimony to the strength of our higher

feelings.
All these impressions we are happy to say Miss
Avonia Jones amply confirmed on her appearance
at the Adelphi Theatre last evening, and in
the character she first assumed, the " Medea" of
Legoure, adapted in three acts, from the play
originally written for Rachel, but made most
familiar to our public by the wonderful efforts
of Ristori. Miss Avonia Jones repeated it with no
abatement of that extraordinary force with which
she paints the appalling destiny of the being
who feels that love can even justify her crimes,
and whose hate and fury are the expression rather
of her desolation than her wrongs,—the wife and
mother who sees in her children but the reflected
possession of her husband, and who, in daring all
for his possession, loses all in his own falsehood.
If all this was still expressed as the pervading
spirit of the performance, it lost none of its previous
force in the great occasions which conveyed it ;
as in the well-known image of tae panther, and if
the less vehement the not less startling declaration,
when she remind 3 her lover that their crimes had
become their bond of union. On all of these occasions
the imagination which sbe so grandly appealed
to, yielded even at the Adelphi theatre, as warm a
response as at Drury Lane, and perhaps furnished
by that fact a still higher testimony to her power. In
the teeth of all the traditions and associations of the
house she went direct to the heart of the audience,
and the audience as vigorously responded. We have
never witnessed a more genuine or instantaneous
success. Loudly applauded in all her best passages,
she was called for most unanimously at the close of

every act.
The remainder of the performance must be judged
with the allowance that a semi-classic play is not
the usual work of this theatre—and, consequently,
one in which its actors have had tne most expe
rience. Mr. Steuart, as the Creon, had at least
dignity and good intention, Mr. Billington looked
Jason to the life, and Mr. Sefton spoke the Orpheus
with commendable taste and feeling, Miss Simms
also was a graceful and interesting Creusa. The
house was well attended.