The Sun.
London, England, 1848-12-21 00:00:00

ADELPHI THEATRE.

Mr. Webster is certainly the most enterprising
and the most liberal of lessees. It was only
yesterday morning that Mr. Charles Dickens's
Christmas volume, The .Haunted Man, and the
Ghost's Bargain, was published, and last night
a dramatic version of it, written and acted and
put on the stage with the greatest care, was
produced, and produced with a degree of success
which promises well to reward the lessee for the
spirit with which he invariably caters for the amuse-
ment of his patrons. It is a work of the merest
supererogation to detail the plot. Every reader by
this time has read the book and has formed his own
judgment as to the merits or demerits of the story.
In the Adelphi dramatic version the tale is as literally
reproduced from the work as is compatible with dra-
matic exigencies, and even where it has been neces-
sary to turn what in the work is description into
dialogue in the drama, the words of the
author have been preserved wherever that is
possible, so that the drama may be said to
be by Charles Dickens as well as the book.
Mr. Dickens could not have had a more conscientious
adapter. The character of Redlaw, the haunted man,
" taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy, shadowed by habitual
reserve, retiring always, jocund never," the man
haunted by "an awful likeness of himself "—the man
who accepts the fatal gift of oblivion of his own
wrongs on condition that he shall impart that gift of
oblivion to all whom he approaches, was admirably
sustained by Mr. Hughes. It is a long, and in some
respects a thankless character, with much to say and
little to do, and scarcely any opportunity of making
a point. Mr. Hughes, however, thoroughly en-
tered into the spirit of his author, and depicted
the gloomy, moody, melancholy, disappointed man
with a force and power that we have never seen opened,
since we saw last Young in Penruddock. Not only is Red-
law oneot. the very best things that Mr. Hughes ,has yet
done, but it is one of the very best things that has been
done at the Adelphi fur some time. 0. Smith was the
phantom, and a:rnost ghastly ghostly phantom he ap-
peared. It appeared really doubtful whether he were
a thing of flesh and blood, or only thin air. The illu-
sion was made the more complete by the gradual
manner in which the vanishing of the phantom was
managed—it
_evaporated rather than disappeared,
and by the adaptation of sliding machinery
it glided noiselessly from place to place
without lifting its feet. Miss Woolgar was
Milly, the " calm and quiet wife" of William
Swidger, and exquisitely did she portray this
beautiful incarnation of every feminine virtue.
The Swidgers, old Philip and young Wil-
liam, were excellently acted by Lambert
and Munyard, and the Boy, "the young monster,
a child who never had been child," the type of
thousands who infest our streets, of those unfortunate
neglected children who people our prisons and our
hulks, and for the reformation of whom our ragged
schools are instituted, was acted with immense power,
truthfulness, and intensity by Miss Ellen Chaplin.
Her making up of the character was magnificent ;
t here was no attempt to hide the squalor of the boy,
no coquettish endeavour to look pretty in rags ; with
true artistic feeling she forgot Miss Ellen Chaplin
in the boy, and was the very boy him-
self. The Tetterby group was admirably
delineated ; Wright made up A. Tetterby and Co. in
excellent style, and produced an immensely hu-
morous effect from his peculiar method of wiping
" up" his nose. His acting too was full of unc-
tion, and the scene in which he has to keep
the eight juvenile Tetterbys in order, con-
vulsed the audience with laughter. Mrs. Frank
Matthews was delightfully short and snap-
pish as Mrs. Tetterby—her manner of cutting
the bread and butter was superb. Master Wood-
ward played the part of Johnny Tetterby with a
depth of feeling and power and dramatic talent
which in other days would have procured for
him the title of a " Young Roscius." There
is "stuff" about this clever boy, and if he be pro-
perly
cared for he will one day be a great actor. The
scenes are fan similes of the illustrations of the book,
and the whole went off with the greatest success.
The house was crowded.