The Graphic, 14th December, 1883.
“Never, perhaps, have the playgoing public been so much at variance with the critics as in the case of the young American actress now performing at the Lyceum Theater. There is no denying the fact that Miss Anderson is, to use a popular expression, ‘the rage;’ but it is equally certain that she owes this position in very slight degree to the published accounts of her acting. From the first she has been received, with few exceptions, only in a coldly critical spirit; and yet her reputation has gone on gathering in strength till now, the Lyceum is crowded nightly with fashionable folk whose carriages block the way; and those who would secure places to witness her performances are met at the box offices with the information that all the seats have been taken long in advance. How are we to account for the fact that this young lady who came but the other day among us a stranger, even her name being scarcely known, and who still refrains from those ‘bold advertisements,’ which in the case of so many other managers and performers usurp the functions of the trumpet of fame, has made her way in a few short months only to the very highest place in the estimation of our play going public? We can see no possible explanation save the simple one that her acting affords pleasure in a high degree; for those who insinuate that her beauty alone is the attraction may easily be answered by reference to numerous actresses of unquestionable personal attractions who have failed to arouse anything approaching to the same degree of interest. As regards the unfavorable critics, we are inclined to think that they have been unable to shake off the associations of the essentially artificial characters—Parthenia and Pauline—in which Miss Anderson has unfortunately chosen to appear. Further complaints of artificiality and coldness have, it is true, been put forth a propos of her first appearance on Saturday evening in Mr. Gilbert’s beautiful mythological comedy of ‘Pygmalion and Galatea;’ but protests are beginning to appear in some quarters, and we are much mistaken if this graceful and accomplished actress is not destined yet to win the favor of her censors. The statuesque beauty of her appearance and the classic grace of all her movements and attitudes, as the Greek statue suddenly endowed with life, have received general recognition; but not less remarkable were the simplicity, the tenderness, and, on due occasion, the passionate impulse of her acting, though the impersonation is no doubt in the chastened classical vein. It is difficult to imagine how a realization of Mr. Gilbert’s conception could be made more perfect.”
The World, 12th December, 1883.
“The revival of ‘Pygmalion and Galatea’ at the Lyceum on Saturday last, with Miss Mary Anderson in the part of the animated statue, excited considerable interest and drew together a large and enthusiastic audience. Without attempting any comparison between Mrs. Kendal and the young American actress, it may at once be stated, that the latter gave an interesting and original rendering of Galatea. As the velvet curtain drawn aside disclosed the snowy statue on its pedestal, in a pose of classic beauty, it seemed hard to believe that such sculptural forms, the delicate features, the fine arms, the graceful figure, could be of any other material than marble. The gradual awakening to life, the joy and wonder of the bright young creature, to whom existence is still a mystery, were charmingly indicated; and when Miss Anderson stepped forward slowly in her soft clinging draperies, with her pretty brown hair lightly powdered, she satisfied the most fastidiously critical sense of beauty. Galatea, as Miss Anderson understands her, is statuesque; but Galatea is also a woman, perfect in the purity of ideal womanhood. The chief characteristics of her nature are innate modesty and refinement, which, though, perhaps, not strictly fashionable attributes, are appropriate enough in a daughter of the gods. When she loves, it is without any airs and graces. She has not an atom of self-consciousness; she cannot premeditate; she loves because she must, rather than because she will, because it is the condition of her life. Some of the naive remarks she has to utter, might in clumsy lips seem coarse. Miss Anderson delivered them with consummate grace and innocence, but her fine smile, her bright sparkling eye, proved sufficiently, that the innocence was not stupidity. The first long speech at the conclusion of which she kneels to Pygmalion was beautifully rendered, and elicited a burst of applause, which was repeated at intervals throughout the evening. Her poses were always graceful, sometimes strikingly beautiful.
“Miss Anderson has the true sense of rhythm and the clearest enunciation; she has a deep and musical voice, which in moments of pathos thrills with a sweet and tender inflection. She has seized, in this instance, upon the touching rather than the harmonious side of Galatea, the pure and innocent girl who is not fit to live upon this world. She is only not human because she is superior to human folly; she cannot understand sin because it is so sweet; she asks to be taught a fault; but the womanly love and devotion, and unselfishness, are all there, writ in clear and uncompromising characters. The first and last acts were decidedly the best; in the latter especially Miss Anderson touched a true pathetic chord, and fairly elicited the pity and sympathy of the audience. With a gentle wonder and true dignity she meets the gradual dropping away of her illusion, the crumbling of her unreasoning faith, the cruel stings when her spiritual nature is misunderstood, and her actions misinterpreted. She is jarred by the rough contact of commonplace facts, and ruffled and wounded by the strange and cynical indifference to her sufferings of the man she loves. At last when she can bear no more, yet uncomplaining to the last, like a flower broken on its stem, shrinking and sensitive, she totters out with one loud cry of woe, the expression of her agony. Miss Anderson is a poet, she brings everything to the level of her own refined and artistic sensibility, and the result is that while she presents us with a picture of ideal womanhood, she must appeal of necessity rather to our imaginations than to our senses, and may by some persons be considered cold. Once or twice she dropped her voice so as to became almost inaudible, and occasionally forced her low tones more than was quite agreeable; but whether in speech, in gesture, or in delicate suggestive byplay, her performance is essentially finished. One or two little actions may be noted, such as the instinctive recoil of alarmed modesty when Pygmalion blames her for saying ‘things that others would reprove,’ or her expression of troubled wonder to find that it is ‘possible to say one thing and mean another.’”
Daily Telegraph, 10th December, 1883.
“‘Pygmalion and Galatea.’
“It is the fashion to judge of Miss Anderson outside her capacity and competency as an actress. Ungraciously enough she is regarded and reviewed as the thing of beauty that is a joy forever, and her infatuated admirers view her first as a picture, last as an artist. If, then, public taste was agitated by the Parthenia who lolled in her mother’s lap and twisted flower garlands at the feet of her noble savage Ingomar; if society fluttered with excitement at the sight of the faultless Pauline gazing into the fire on the eve of her ill-fated marriage, how much more jubilation there will be now that Miss Mary Anderson, a lovely woman in studied drapery, stands posed at once as a statue, and as a subject for the photographic pictures which will flood the town. Unquestionably Miss Anderson never looked so well as a statue, both lifeless and animated, never comported herself with such grace, never gave such a perfect embodiment of purity and innocence. In marble she was a statue motionless; in life she was a statue half warmed. There are those who believe, or who try to persuade themselves, that this is all Galatea has to do—to appear behind a curtain as a ‘pose plastique,’ to make an excellent ‘tableau vivant,’ and to wear Greek drapery, as if she had stepped down from a niche in the Acropolis. All this Miss Mary Anderson does to perfection. She is a living, breathing statue. A more beautiful object in its innocent severity the stage has seldom seen. But is this all that Galatea has to do? Those who have studied Mr. Gilbert’s poem will scarcely say so. Galatea descended from her pedestal has to become human, and has to reconcile her audience to the contradictory position of a woman, who, presumably innocent of the world and its ways, is unconsciously cynical and exquisitely pathetic. We grant that it is a most difficult part to play. Only an artist can give effect to the comedy, or touch the true chord of sentiment that underlies the idea of Galatea. But to make Galatea consistently inhuman, persistently frigid, and monotonously spiritual, is, if not absolutely incorrect, at least glaringly ineffective. If Galatea does not become a breathing, living woman when she descends from her pedestal, a woman capable of love, a woman with a foreshadowing of passion, a woman of tears and tenderness, then the play goes for nothing…. Miss Anderson reads Galatea in a severe fashion. She is a Galatea perfectly formed, whose heart has not yet been adjusted. She shrinks from humanity. She wants to be classical and severe, and her last cry to Pygmalion, instead of being the utterance of a tortured soul, is ‘monotonous and hollow as a ghost’s.’ It is with no desire to be discourteous that we venture any comparison between the Galatea of Miss Anderson and of Mrs. Kendal. The comparison should only be made on the point of reading. Yet surely there can be no doubt that Mrs. Kendal’s idea of Galatea, while appealing to the heart, is more dramatically effective. It illumines the poem.”
The Times, 28th January, 1884.
“Lyceum Theater.