The Sun.
London, England, 1836-11-08 00:00:00

ADELPHL

Last night a new burietta, called A Flight to America;
or, Ten Hours in New York, was produced at this theatre,
for the express purpose of calling into request all the comic
talent of the company, but more especially that of Mr. Rice,
the able and faithful delineator of the American nigger,
who made his appearance here for the first time after the
conclusion of his engagement at the Surrey. The materials
composing the plot are as slender as can well be conceived,
but full of bustle and animation throughout. A pair of
fair fugitives, Juliette Labelle, an opera dancer, and Ellen
Segrave, her friend, are on their way from Liverpool to
America, the former making her escape from her guardian,
and by whom she is pursued, as alio by Antoine Pirouette,
an antiquated French dc.ncing-master, whose pupil she had
been, and who, in the infatuation of old age, is deeply
enamoured of her charms, a dame to whom he had been
yoked for many years before having proved faithless to her
vow, and fled from his fire-side. Meanwhile Benjamin Blen-
kinsop, a cockney, who had come in for a fortune by
the death of an uncle, having paid his addresses to Juliette
Labelle, promised her marriage, but afterwards, repenting
of his precipitancy, seeks to avoid the contract by taking a
trip across the Atlantic. All the parties sail together in
the same vessel, but it is not till their arrival at New York
that a recognition takes place between them. The inci-
dents of the voyage are as varied and ludicrous as may
reasonably be expected, and with them the first act termi-
nates. In the second act a very amusing picture is given
of American manners, and here it is that Mr. Rice, while
presenting an original personation of his far-famed Jim
Crow, in the character of an ostler at " The One Tun Inn,"
and afterwards promoted to the station of Cicerone to
Blenkinsop, produced an effect which must add very mate-
rially to the celebrity he has already acquired. His success
was complete from the first moment to the last, and there
were reiterated calls for several portions of his interminable
song. The humour ho displayed in haranguing a body of
his brother "niggers," as an officer in command of them,
was comic in the highest degree ; nor was he less
happy while exhibiting himself in his military character
at a black ball, particularly at the moment when the
whole party are interrupted by a loud knocking at
the door announcing the arrival of Blenkinsop, whom Jim
Crow, with all the effrontery of nigger independence, invites
to join in the dance. Towards the conclusion of the piece,
the Frenchman discovers his frail spouse in the person of
the landlady of an hotel at New York, and is reconciled to
her. Shortly afterwards, Jim Crow, the" runaway nigger,"
obtains his freedom by means of the hard dollars of his
master, Blenkissop ; Juliette Labelle giving up all claims
upon the latter, unites herself to a more favoured suitor,
and the cockney is joined in the silken bonds to her friend
Ellen Segrave. The comic trifle which has been thus made
the medium of much varied talent, was as well received as
the author could possibly desire, and is likely to have a run
for some nights. Mr. Reeve as Blenkinsop, and Mr.
Buckstone as a " Virginian settler, one of the not•to-be-
denied go-ahead school," gave each a rich sample of his