The Potteries Examiner : — 1875-05-08 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

THEATB.E ROYAL—This establishment has well sus. tamed its reputation during the week as the Hippocrene and Aganippe of our town—sacred to Thebnime, the mind.soother, and to Melete, the goddess of meditation; though not producing, as before, Shakespetian drama, has demonstrated that other selections may at times be a useful variety, as well as keep up public patronage. We have just space to notice that for the former part of the week the "O'Donnell A'Boo" not only took well, from its novelty, but was highly appreciated both as to its plot and dramatic character. The play is founded upon events in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and carries with it the flavour and smack of that stirring period, had especially of the eventful history of the Emerald Isle, where are pitched the scenes of the drama. Until the spirit that ruled that period, and the events which made apparent the fiery and splendid re. sistance of Ireland to every form of oppression, are dramatised, it might have been supposed that not much in. terest could be fouud in this drama now-a.days—cui boa,,? None, some would say, care to bear of even Ciesar or Xenophon, except he who has rubbed his back against the walls of Cambridge or Oxford. The escape of an ordinary pickpocket would afford more interest than the famous retreat of the ten thousand, or a "woodcut" of a "horrible murder," daubed in all, the morbid agonies and cruel mockeries of death, be more tragical than the best of plays, and furnish more interesting matter for reading than the battle of Marathon and Thermopylae. This might be true but for the inexorable law—the Divine law, underlying all others, and 'which, in ruling the progress of the human race, places all those of nobler developement and higher social education in sympathy with all the glorious, self. abnegating, self-denying heroes of the past. It is for this reason that the stage is not only a splendid gallery of human pictures, but a test of human nature —an educator educing from within those principles of justice, benevolence, compas. sion, and anger, which, as far as we know, seem to be principles of the Divine Being,. Perhaps in no instance are these principles so much roused as in witnessing the struggles for oppressed freedom. Chains always appeal to the tragic in man, when he sees his fellow burdened with shackle-bolts and with fetter. locks, because every man alike sighs for freedom as he does for the all-circulating air. It was to these principles the O'Donnell appealed throughout in a history eloquent with wrongs. Miss Sara de Barr, as Margaret, enacted her part well. Some of the passages were highly wrought, anti brought 'down the plaudits of the house. The address in which she alludes to mercy on her knees- is brilliant in its delivery, and when the terrific combat, where fire flashes from the glittering , swords, which gnash like the teeth of battle, ends in a ' temporary defeat of Lord Molyneux, and Margaret's father is about to cleave the head of the English com- i mender, he is saved from the fatal stroke by the inter. I cession of Margaret—one of those fine touches representing the comparison of a nature exuberant with pity like that of Porabontos, when she saved the chief of the Virginia expedition from the uplifted club. Mr. Frank Newman (as Molyneux) sustains well the character of commander, though despotic in his plans to win the hand of the O'Neirs daughter, yet sensitive to the slightest whisper of insubordination, unrelenting lathe last, there is an utter absence of everything like feeling at misfortunes of others—the idea that dominates his being is war. Butler Stanhope, as the Hugh O'Donnell,