The Sun.
London, England, 1850-01-10 00:00:00

OLYMPIC THEATRE.

America is worthily repaying us the dramatic debt
she owes us. The seeds of the dramatic art which
have been scattered by all our best dramatic artistes,
broadcast on the American soil, have fructified and
are now bearing fruit. America has, within the
last three years, given us Miss Cushman, the great-
est tragedian at present on the stage Mrs.
Mowatt, the most interesting of young tra-
gedians, the most lady-like of genteel co-
medians, the only lady who has shown herself
capable of taking Miss Foote's line of characters,
since Miss Foote left the stage—Mr. Davenport, one
of the most energetic and powerful actors of melo-
drama that has appeared of late years, and whose
powers as a legitimate tragedian and as a genteel co-
median are of no common order, besides a host of
excellent delineators of Yankee peculiarities; but
America bad not given us, until last night, any play
that would stand the test of representation before a
London audience. Rough and ranting melodramas
have formed the staple of what America
had hitherto sent us, but last night this reproach was
wiped out, and there was represented at this theatre,
with the most deserved success, an original American
five-act comedy, the scene of which is laid in New
York, and which delineates American manners after
the same fashion as our own Gsrrick, Colman,
and Sheridan were accustomed to delineate
English manners, and which, as re-
gards plot, construction, character or dialogue,
is worthy to take its place by the side cf the best
of English comedies. It is from the pen of
that most delightful & f actresses, Mrs. Mowatt, and is
entitled Fashion ; or Life in .2V( w Fork; and the fol-
lowing is an; outline cf the plot, or rather of the three
plots interwoven with each other, in the most skilful
and artisticel manner of this most admirably
built comedy. The vulgar wife of a New York mer-
chant is bitten with the mania to be a leader of fashion;
ignorant of the requisites, she takes her rudiments from
a French waiting-maid and a .coi-dissant Count, who
both fool her to the top of her bent. This Count is the
aecer t'd suitor of her daughter ; and, after very nearly
marrying the young lady, he is finally unmasked
and shown to have been successively a cook and a
valet, and the faithless lover (in Paris) of the wait-
ing-maid, whom he is ultimately content to marry in
the hope of becoming an honest man. The extra-
vagance of the merchant's wife has embarrassed the
affairs of the husband, who has bad recourse to
forgery to retrieve them. A confidential clerk has
discovered the crime of his principal; and throughout
the piece the servant uses his secret with a vulgar ty-
ranny over the master, even to the extent of in-
sisting on marrying the daughter. sorely against the
will of her mother, who of course favours the
fashionable Count. This part of the plot is disposed
of by the clerk, in the very moment of triumph, being
threatened with punishment as an accessory after the
fact ; and his compelled silence thus ensured, the
principal is allowed to be screened under a promise
of repentance. There is yet a third plot in
this piece. In the merchant's family there is a go-
verness, en orphan, who has been persecuted by
the furtive addresses of the Count, but, honourably
loved by a colonel in the American army. This
young lady detects the imposture practised on the
family, and in her endeavour to expose it she is placed
in an equivocal position. The agent by whom the
whole difficulty is finally adjusted is a rich old coun-
try farmer, a former friend of the merchant's,
whose rough, honest nature brings him into
collision, from first to last, with the pseudo fashion-
ables, and who, at the critical moment, is able
to vindicate . the honour of the young governess,
and at the same time to acknowledge her as his
granddaughter and heiress. She has been allowed to
grow up among sharpers, and to struggle in the
battle of life in obedience to a theory of the old man's
—rather dangerous in practice—that she shall thus
be taught the value of independence. Mrs. Mowatt
deserves the credit of having blended and interwoven
these three plots with considerable skill and stage
tact, so that each depends upon the other without
confusion ; while all steadily progress towards the
denouement. The comedy was perfectly acted ; Mr.
Davenport. as Adam Truernan, the old farmer, threw
a feeling of warmth and heartiness into the part which
has not been equalled since the days of Fawcett ; and
Mhs F. Vining, as Gertrude, his governess daughter,
was most. interesting. Mr. Johnstone acted the part
of Mr. Tiffany with considerable power, and Mrs.
Marston, as Mrs. Tiffieny, was the pink of vulgarity.
Scharf, as the roguish clerk, was full of truth-
fulness, his abashed manner when threatened with
proSecution contrasting most artistically with his pre-
vious vulgar and overbearing insolence. Mr. and Mrs.
A. Wigan, acted the French Countl and the French
waiting-maid as they alone can act such characters,
Mr. J. Herbert was excessively humorous as a high-
minded Nigger. All the characters grouped round
the Tiffanies were admirably sustained, but, to our
thinking the character of the group, nay,
we are I almost inclined to think that, as
far as English audiences are concerned, the cha-
racter cf the comedy,{ is that of Prudence, the sister
of Mrs. Tiffany, a prim puritanical Yankee old maid,
who has not " fairly given the matter up," and who,
when not making hot love, is making diabolical
mischief. She is the chorus of the piece, re-
minding every one of their faults, and every
parvenu of his or her origin ; she is,
in fact, "a dreadful woman," and, what is better
still an original character, a specimen of American
society, to which we had never before been
introduced. This character was admirably acted
by Mrs. Parker, who evidently revelled
in the part. The comedy was admirably
put on the stage ; the drawing-room and ball-
room scenes, in fact, all the scenes of the resort
of the fashionables, were quite equal to anything
that was done at the Olympic during the most palmy
days of the Vestris management. The comedy was
perfectly acted, and perfectly put on the stage. The
applause was enthusiastic, and at the conclu-
sion there were loud calls for Mrs. Mowatt,
who had taken no part in the performance, but who
at length appeared before the curtain to receive that
enthusiastic applause which she had so highly merited
by the production of this most excellent comedy. The
house was crowded to excess.