The Portland daily press., 1870-11-28
M. sre..lemhessss resd!Aas

! Y - ~ NJ Of H. Ffess'
| h'' ypress So, If through your tolhlnns
; IN i lew words, on this gent1eman's entertain
ment on Wednesday evening? I have no doubt
you will say yes. You are very kind in often
giving us outside barbarans an opportunity to
criticise, and do not believe you will put up
the bars just now.
Mr. V. is line elocutionist, and never fails
to give his audiences an agreeable entertain
ment. His resources are too varied TO admit
OF failure But he affords different degrees of
pleasure, according as he makes up his pro-
gfamme. believe shall be sustained by
large portion of bis admirers when say he
never gives his audience more delight than
when he appears with q list of short readings
IRON the best authors, passing from grave TO
gay, from lively to severe, as the evening
wanes; and that he never gratifies his audi
ence less than hen he attempts to represent
scenes from plays in which several characters
are involved. Here, with DO scenic effects,
lack of appropriate dress, and an attempt to
double his characters, he tries the patience
of many a Listener, who never read the 'Mer-
chant of Venice, the 'Road to Ruin" etc, and
find themselves repeatedly querying as to what
the deuce he's driving at. One must be fa-
miliar with the plot of the plays from which
extracts are made, to keep the sense at all
When they are not, (and many are in that pre-
dicamenD it is simply bore which is endured
out of courtesy to the respectable gentleman
and lady who are trying to personate the Jew
or Gratiano, or Capt. Absolute or Jack; Lydia
or Mrs. Malaprop, without being quite sure
which is which The tedious rendering of these
scenes, on Wednesday evening, fully Justify
this view. I am rather near sighted, but nv
vision was good enough on this evening to see
many heads dropping with WEAKNESS, while
poor Shylock was being worriedrby his tormen-
tors, that under the beauties of extracts from
the poets, brief and to the point, would have
been wide awake with exhilaraton and de-
light.
These dramatic representations from stand |
ard plays, are the most difficult to give. That |
know full well. And so the personator i'm |
AGNES they give the most delight to majority
OF hearers. But it is not 50. Pieces of pathos |
and beauty-leaching the heart from their
simplicity aud faithlulness to nature, or con-
vulsing with laughter by its humorous proper
tons, in varying shape fill up an evening with |
great delight, as Mr.. " proved to us, when he |
on the frat occasion year or two |
since. For one say, of W Wednesday evenings |
with the utmost respect for The |
worthy gentleman, ''no more of that Hal, an |
thou lowest me-" CASSIE |
with all due respect for the criticism of our |
friend we must bear in mind that there large |
number of the audiences that attend Mr.. Van |
denhoff's readings who are probably even bet |
ter acquainted with the plots of Shakespeares |
and Sheridan's plays than with the poems of |
Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Tepnyson,
Scott, Hood or Browning, and who take great |
delight in the representations conceived and
by Mr.. and Mrs. " Surely on the
Jane ground one might cant at the readings of
Fanny Kemble or Miss Glyn, whose efforts
have delighted scores of cultivated people at
home and abroad although we are not prepar- |
I'd to say that Mr. and Mrs. Vandenhoff are
heir euuals-ED