STARS IN THE STRAND; OR, THE HORSE AND THE LADY.
RISING TO THE SITUATION!
MY DEAR MR. PUNCH,
One of the greatest attractions in Town to the Country Cousin I need scarcely say is the Theatre. Speaking for myself, it is the place I earliest visit when I get to London, and consequently I was not surprised to find myself the other evening in the Adelphi, on the first night of a new play. As an Irishman might guess, from its name (The English Rose), the piece is all about Ireland. Both State and Church are represented therein—the former by a comic sergeant of the Royal Constabulary, and the latter by a priest, who wears a hat in the first Act that would have entirely justified his being Boycotted. The plot is not very strong, and suggests recollections of the Flying Scud, Arrah Na Pogue, and The Silver King. The acting is fairly satisfactory, the cast including a star, supported by an efficient company. The star is a horse that pranced about the stage in the most natural manner possible, carefully avoiding the orchestra. In spite, however, of his anxiety to keep out of the stalls, suggestive as they were (but only in name) of the stable, some little alarm was created in the neighbourhood of the Conductor, which did not entirely subside until the fall of the curtain. But the sagacious steed knew its business thoroughly well, and was indeed an admirable histrion. Only once, at the initial performance, did this intelligent creature remember its personality, and drop the public actor in the private individual. The occasion was when it had to put its head out of a loose-box to listen to the singing of a serio-comic song by a lady, dressed as a "gossoon." For a few minutes the talented brute made a pretence of eating some property foliage, and then, catching sight of the audience, it deliberately counted the house! I regret to add that, in spite of the valuable support afforded by this useful member of the Messrs. GATTI's Company, its name did not appear in the playbill.
A BREAKDOWN AT THE LYCEUM!
A few evenings later I had a second time the advantage of being present at a first night's performance. The occasion was, the production of The Great Unknown, by AUGUSTIN DALY's Company of Comedians. I found the piece described as a "new eccentric Comedy," but, beyond a certain oddness in the distribution of the characters of the cast, did not notice much novelty or eccentricity. The life and soul of the evening's entertainment was Miss ADA REHAN, a talented lady, who (so I was told) has made her mark in Rosalind, in As You Like It, and Katharina, in the Taming of the Shrew. I can quite believe that Miss REHAN is a great success in parts of the calibre of the Shakspearian heroines I have mentioned; nay, more, I fancy she would do something with Lady Macbeth, and be quite in her element as Emilia, in Othello. But, as she had to play an ingénue, aged eighteen, in The Great Unknown, she was not quite convincing. It was a very good part. In the First Act she had to coax her papa, and flirt with her cousin; in the second, to respond to a declaration of love with a burst of womanly feeling; and, in the third, to play the hoyden, and dance a breakdown. All this was done to perfection, but not by a young lady of eighteen. Miss ADA REHAN was charming, but looked, and I fancy felt, many years older than her legal majority. I question whether she was an ingénue at all, but, if she were, she was an ingénue of great and varied experience. When Mrs. BANCROFT appeared as the girl-pupil in School, she was the character to the life; but when Miss REHAN calls herself Etna, throws herself on sofas, and hugs a man with less inches than herself, we cannot but feel that it is very superior play-acting, but still play-acting. Take it all round, I was delighted with the lady at the Lyceum, and the horse at the Adelphi, and nearly regret that, having to leave town, I shall not have the opportunity of seeing either of them again.