The Sun. — 1863-04-07 (London, England)

RAND.  Mr. Byron has acted wisely this year in going to Eastern fiction for the subject of his burlesque at this house, and in choosing the story of the " Forty Thieves" he has also mhown the judgment. Few stories present more variety of incident and character for the burlesque writer to work upon, or a plot more simple and interesting or more familiar to every man, woman, and child among the audience. It has been presented in the form of an extravaganza at least half a dozen times during the last fifteen years—from the time when Messrs. Gilbert a Beckett and Mark Lemon placed it on the Lyceum stage, to the " Savage Club" performance for a literary charity. No amount of repetition seems to exhaust its at ractiveness, and " Ali Baba, or the Thirty Nine Thieves," at the Strand Theatre, promises to be another of Mr. Byron's many successes in this peculiar walk of dramatic literature. One feature to be commended in this version is the ab• sence of female parts played by men. Very rarely can this burlesque trick be performed without bringing coarseness and vulgarity on the stage, and we are glad to find that the piece has been cast without any of these violent transformations. Ganem and Abdallah are both played ty ladies, but this is in good taste ; and the latter character, so sustained, calla up recollections of the elegant Miss Fairbrother. The story of the "Forty Thieves' is so well known that we need waste no time in repeating it. Mr. Byron has treated it with the usual license allowed to burlesque authors, and has obtained a very effective situation in the cave scene, by causing all the thieves to b 3 turned into stone by Morgiana and the enchanter Orcobrand, and so rescuing Cassini Baba. The business of the jar scene is carried a little too far when the ghastly head of one of the murdered thieves is drawn up by Hassarac and played with, but with this exception the piece is singularly free from anything that can offend the most fastidious hater of butlesque. The writing is sparkling—and daring when it dashes after puns—and many of the songs are very happy as parodies, The scenery and dresses are equal to anything that has been seen at this theatre, and that is saying a great deal ; and the music, arranged by Mr. Musgrave, is well selected and  executed, The acting in all the parts leaves little to be desired. Miss Ada Swanborough as Abdallah, Miss Polly Marshall as Ganem, and Miss Charlotte Saunders as Morgiana were all excellent—the first as a swell captain, the second ns a saucy boy, and the third as a faithful serio-comic maid of all work. Mr. Turner was jovial as Ali Baba ; and Mr. Frank Seymour—an old member of the company—made a very successful reappearance as Cassim Bat a. The principal part, Hassarac (a part, by the way, which the author sustained last night at Mr. Swanborough 's theatre in Birmingham), was most humourously and artistically rendered by Mr. George Honey. His musical acquirements, as we expected, were remarkably useful in the concerted music and mock operatic arias, but he did more for the part than this—he gave an entirely new version of the mock melodramatic ruffian, and his bye play overflowed with grotesque fancy. All the other performers exerted themselves in the most praiseworthy manner, and the result was a genuine success, and the loudest applause for everybody at the fall of the curtain.