Covent-Garden.
Cymon, an opera, by Garrick, was brought out on Monday. It is not very interesting, either in itself or the music. Mr. Duruset played Cymon very naturally, though the compliment is, perhaps, somewhat equivocal. Miss Stephens looked very prettily in Sylvia; but the songs had not any great effect: ‘Sweet Passion of Love’ was the best of them.
‘It is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love.’
Mrs. Liston, who played a little old woman, was encored in the burlesque song, ‘Now I am seventy-two.’ Mr. Liston’s Justice Dorus is a rich treat: his face is certainly a prodigious invention in physiognomy.
MISS O’NEILL’S BELVIDERA
The Examiner.
December 10, 1815.
Miss O’Neill repeated her usual characters last week. We saw her in Belvidera, and were disappointed. We do not think she plays it so well as she did last year. We thought her representation of it then as near perfection as possible; and her present acting we think chargeable in many instances, with affectation and extravagance. She goes into the two extremes of speaking so loud as to ‘split the ears of the groundlings’ and so low as not to be heard. She has (or we mistake) been taking a bad lesson of Mr. Kean: in our opinion, the excellences of genius are not communicable. A second-rate actor may learn of a first; but all imitation in the latter must prove a source of error: for the power with which great talent works, can only be regulated by its own suggestions and the force of nature. The bodily energy which Mr. Kean exhibits cannot be transferred to female characters, without making them disgusting instead of impressive. Miss O’Neill during the two last acts of Belvidera, is in a continual convulsion. But the intention of tragedy is to exhibit mental passion and not bodily agony, or the last only as a necessary concomitant of the former. Miss O’Neill clings so long about Jaffier, and with such hysterical violence, before she leaps upon his neck and calls for the fatal blow, that the connection of the action with the sentiment is lost in the pantomime exhibition before us. We are not fastidious; nor do we object to having the painful worked up with the catastrophe to the utmost pitch of human suffering; but we must object to a constant recurrence of such extreme agony, as a convenient common-place or trick to bring down thunders of applause. Miss O’Neill twice, if we remember, seizes her forehead with her clenched fists, making a hissing noise through her teeth, and twice is thrown into a fit of agonized choking. Neither is her face fine enough in itself not to become unpleasant by such extreme and repeated distortion. Miss O’Neill’s freedom from mannerism was her great charm, and we should be sorry to see her fall into it. Mr. C. Kemble’s Jaffier had very considerable effect. Mr. Young’s Pierre is his best character.
A new Farce was brought out here on Monday week, the title of which is What’s a Man of Fashion? a question which it does not solve. A young lady (Miss Mathews) is left a fortune by her father, on condition of her marrying a man of fashion within a year of his death. Her aunt (Mrs. Davenport) is left her guardian, and locks her up to prevent her marrying any one, that the fortune may devolve to her. Old Project (personated by Fawcett) is instigated by the young lady, through the key-hole of the door where she is locked up, to find her a husband who shall also be a man of fashion; and just as the old gentleman, who is a very strange mixture of the sailor, fox-hunter, and Bond-street lounger, has undertaken this laudable task, he meets his nephew (Mr. Jones), whom he fixes upon as the candidate for the young lady and for fifty thousand pounds. The whole business of the piece arises out of the attempts of Old Project to bring them together, and the schemes of the aunt to prevent the conclusion of the marriage before the expiration of the year, that is, before it strikes twelve o’clock at night. After many trifling and improbable adventures, Old Project and his nephew succeed. The clock strikes twelve, but the man of fashion and his mistress have been married a few minutes before, though nobody knows how. We do not think this farce a bit better than some we have lately noticed. The author seems to have sat down to write it without a plot. There is neither dialogue nor character in it, nor has it any thing to make it amusing, but the absurdity of the incidents.
We have seen Miss O’Neill in the Orphan, and almost repent of what we have said above. Her Monimia is a piece of acting as beautiful as it is affecting. We never wish to see it acted otherwise or better. She is the Orphan that Otway drew.