The Sun. — 1844-12-13 (London, England)

THEATRE ROYAL, DUBLIN. (Abridged from the Dublin Evening Packet.) On Thursday evening last the tragedy of the Gamester was represented, Mr. and Mrs. Kean supporting the respective characters of Beverley and Mrs. Beverley, and Mr. Calcraft that of Stukely. Mr. C. Kean's personal endowments are above those of his father, but strikingly inferior to those of J. Kemble. Slight, neat, and scarcely reaching the middle height, his direction is plainly to the graceful and the polished. His features declare at the first glance his intellectual vigour and nervous irritability. His eye discourses. He is great in those characters of Shakspeare in which his father excelled—in Richard and Hamlet especially—in Massinger's Sir Giles, in which he exhibits the same fearful energy ; he vanquishes the obstacles nature has opposed to him in Macbeth by the force of mird. We must hasten at once to that display of his ability which, as we esteem it, constitutes the supreme excellence of his acting—the part of Beverley. Here we have an example of a' talent which neither Kemble nor his father possessed—the portraiture of domestic life—of a soft and noble nature betrayed, deformed, and brought to cureless ruin, and the last and most awful catastrophe— suicide. Highly as we have praised the performance of Shakspeare's tragedy, we are not afraid to award still higher eulogy .to that of Moore's. The attributes of Mr. Kean's acting in both were the same. The same absorption, the same identity. But this grand distinction may be taken. In Beverley one and the same fatal passion prevails, varying its shades only according to the gradations of misery by which its indulgence overwhelms its victim. Paroxysm follows paroxysm—remorse and relapse, pathos and passion, alternate in fearful succession. But in the conduct of these gradations the masterly art of the actor is displayed. Never, we will venture to affirm, has there been so powerful, so terrific an exhibition of ruin and desperation as in the scene of the third act, where, after the total destruction of Beverley's last hope, he rushes from the inner room of the gaming-house. We never witnessed such abandonment of all personal regards, such bursts of passionate invective, such a blending of distortion and expression in the features, such hoarse and horrifying dissonance of tone and inflexion, such a conflict of the most terrible emotions. The test was the sympathy of the audience, which not even this stormy vehemence in the slightest degree interrupted. The last effects were still more touching. The scene, a prison—the persons, a wife, a sister, and a friend—the incidents, a hope and a promise of happiness restored—the author and the victim doomed by a despair so dread as even to forbid the last resource of the wretched, appeal to Divine mercy, yet prompting the commission of suicide and closing in death—all these in rapid evolution presented a combination so intolerably harassing yet of an interest so riveting, that we have never, to our recollection, seen— audience or personally experienced an effect so awful. To this we may add one peculiar trait, A medical man, who witnessed the performance, said to the writer of this article—' Kean must have watched the progress of death by poison.. It is utterly' incredible that an imitation so minutely, so terribly accurate, could have been given but from actual observation. -But' enough— the reader will not need any recital of the other varieties. Of Mrs: Kean we have no more to say, than that her natural and delicate delineations of the tender and touching lineaments of female character have stood and still stand as far above all challenge as they do above all competition."