The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-08 00:00:00

MR. WOODIN'S OLIO OP ODDITIES.

•
We extract the following genial tribute of admr
ration from the columns of our contemporary the
Morning Chronicle
A. great advantage of an entertainment like Mr,
Woodin's is the facility which it affords for the introduc'
Lion of new matter. Made up of shreds and patches,
the " Olio of Oddities" can readily be refitted with
piece here and a piece there, so that those who have seen
it half a dozen times may contrive to visit the Poly,
graphic Hall, and always find something new in addi'
tion to those standing features of the monopolyloguer
which are too unique and wonderful ever to grow stale,
Among the recent additions, the imitation of
Manuel Perez, the Spanish dancer, as the " Doctor in
Love," is singularly grotesque. In- this character
the expression is entirely choreographic. You see
before you a Spanish doctor, not M.D., but AD.,
dressed in a black suit of tights with clerical bands, and
a coat whose long swallow tails' fly in the wind behind
the clerical person in a most ridiculous manner. Yoh
are to imagine the Doctor deprived of every other meano
of expressing the love which fires his heart, and de'
ranges his brain, but that of dancing. Accordingly, the
Doctor dances. Such a dance ! There is no describing
that dance. The demented seriousness of the Doctor 'e
face, the demented evolutions of his thin, black legs, and
the perfect devilry which his tails keep up in the rear/
combine to produce a spectacle at once so novel, so gre'
tesque, and so ludicrouF, that you can only scream with
laughter.

Herr Formes, as Marcel, is in every respect a, won-
derful performance, though it may not be equal to the
personation of Mr. Albert Smith and Mr. Henry Rus-
sell. To "make up" for Herr Formes is no slight
achievement, while the adoption of the basso profundof
and sustaining it throughout the whole of the " Piff-
paff song, is perhaps the greatest polyphonic feat
which Mr. Woodin has performed. Our old friends, the
Foxhunter, Lady Ever Green, and Miss Chattawayt
are as fresh—especially the Foxhunter—in their respec-
tive ways as ever. The last is perhaps the most finished
performance of the whole entertainment. In the re-
presentation of female characters Mr. Woodin is the only
male personage who has ever approached the natural.
In the early days of the monopolylogue the Women were
all coarse and elderly ; the scold and the fish-fag
were the favourite types. Mr. Woodin, however, has
attempted the fashionable and beautiful young lady of
the drawing-room, who plays and sings, and his Miss
Chattaway shows how marvellously he has succeeded.
Those Punch.like figures which pop up behind the flap
of the table are as startling and incomprehensible as
when they first began their strange mercurial career
The instant change of expression and costume, all to
marked and decided, never cease to draw upon our won-
derment. Does Mr. Woodin do it, or does be keep
some dozens of indiarubber figures under his table ready
dressed ? You might imagine this but for the fact that
india-rubber figures have not yet been endowed with the
powers of speech and action.

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