0001

THE COMPANY AT THE PRINCE'S THEATRE.

We have already stated in effect that the company now playing at the Prince's Theatre are much superior to the work devolved upon them by Mr. Boucicault's new play. The ability which they have brought to bear upon the play deserves (particularly in the case of those who fill the leading characters) a fuller and more careful analysis than we have yet given it. We are bound the more to do this, inasmuch as the leading lady, Miss Kate Terry, the most rising young actress of the day, visits Manchester for the first time in connection with this play. We have seen Miss Terry in parts which made greater, deeper, and more various demands upon her powers, but in Mary Leigh she has to pourtray a wide range of emotion, from the innocent and assured happiness of the loved and loving wife, in the opening scenes, through the first shock of fear and undefined sense of impending ill, when her gossiping visitor mentions the name of Count Willidoff and the letters he has shown her, to the sudden 0002 terror under which she swoons, when she first recognises in the soi disant count her villanous first husband, whom she has believed to be dead for ten years. Among other remarkable points in this act we may direct attention to the unexaggerated measure with which Miss Terry pourtrays the playful happiness of the young wife, safe in the love of a generous and unworldly husband, the graceful womanly kindness of her reception of Clara, and the singular truth of her fainting fit, and of the reawakening from it to the reality of horror in the presence of the resusciated Rawdon Scudamore.

In the second act the notable point of Miss Terry's impersonation is the exquisite and pathetic tenderness of her appeal to her husband to take her away, the faltering reluctance with which she brings herself and him face to face with her desire to go alone, away even from him, and the unstudied grace of her actions when after his departure she sinks on the seat and lets her tears have way. Indeed the whole of this act is an example of the best kind of emotional acting, which grasps and never leaves its hold of the groundwork of the situation and character, letting the words and action of the scene grow out of this central conception, with the ease and harmony of development, instead of the painful and visible labour of building up. 0003 And all is done so quietly, with such a graceful and composed womanliness that it steals into us without our consciousness, and wins our tears, we know not how or why. There are but two points in this and the previous act to which we would object, and those are the singular attitudes in which Miss Terry falls when she faints. The swoon in the chair is so true that we are astonished afterwards to find an artificiality of pose which only suggests muscular dexterity.

In the third act, her writing of the letter to her husband is a masterpiece of subdued pathos, kept within the nicest limits of true stage art, where a less refined actress would be certain to overdo the emotion; and in her last defiance of her villanous husband Miss Terry shows how completely the moderation of the preceding passages has been the result of controlled strength and rightly calculated restraint, and not of weakness.

Miss Terry is an almost solitary example of an infant phenomenon having developed into a fine actress. She has retained her true womanly susceptibility under all the hardening and distorting influences of the theatre; and the atmosphere of the lamps has not vulgarised her, though she has breathed it almost from the cradle. The good result of this life-long experience of the boards, in her case, has been that at an age when most actresses are only learning the drill of their art, she is so complete a mistress of this, that she is enabled to devote her attention to the study of the higher and subtler requirements of her calling. We should recommend our Manchester public not to lose the chance which Miss Terry's engagement gives them of seeing the best young actress of our time, and of appreciating those rarest qualities on our stage at this day, grace, refinement, and womanly delicacy, associated with a thorough mastery of the pictorial and executive side of the actress's art, which (with the exception of the instances we have referred to) delights the artistic eye as much as her truth of conception and earnestness of feeling affect and impress the mind of the spectator.

Having given precedence to the lady, we turn to the gentleman in whose hands is the only character to which no exception can be taken—Mr. J. C. Cowper, who plays John Leigh. For, while considering Miss Terry we have been compelled to pass over those points which are inconsistencies in the author's creation, and so to discriminate throughout between the actress and her part, in the case of Mr. Cowper we have a good conception worked out with some bonhommie by Mr. Boucicault, and raised into an attractive admirable man by Mr. Cowper's skill. On this gentleman's last visit to Manchester we did not estimate his performances as highly as did the many voices of his reputation. Since then he has visited the United States, being engaged, if we mistake not, to accompany Miss Bateman. It is much, undoubtedly, in a distribution of parts, to get a rôle, which may be said to be, like a suit of clothes, a perfect fit. Of course, that implies something good to fit, if the display is to be pleasing to the public eye. Such, in short, is Mr. Cowper's case. His inherent powers, maturing by every experience (and this is the process with every conscientious artist), find in this instance a character which precisely suits the present state of Mr. Cowper's artistic development. The fondness in his strong heart for this young wife, his utter trust, and the gentle demonstrativeness of the early scenes, attach to him the admiring interest of the spectators. This interest he continues to excite by his genuine manliness,—a manliness without an admixture of effeminacy of affectation. Nor, on the other hand, is the personation weakened by boisterousness. Mr. Cowper's conception throughout is that of a thorough English gentleman, happy in his wife and children, successful in his profession, and following after the only sound ambition—to be good and wise.

Mr. Henry Irving's “Rawdon Scudamore” recalls the story of Dr. Johnson's chat with Garrick, when the sage told the player that if, as he professed, he felt himself to be the creature he sometimes personated, he deserved to be hanged every time he played it. Mr. Irving pictures a villain as so despicable a being that one feels it a personal injury at the close of the play that he is not killed, or left for execution, or punished in some other appropriate way. With regard to Mr. Irving a mixed opinion prevails,—that he carries out his wickedness with a cool effrontery that is as clever as it is true to the idea of such a scoundrel, and that it must be regretted that so unpleasant a character, without one redeeming feature, has been allotted to him. Since Mr. Irving left Manchester he has not been idle. Many indications in his Scudamore show a progress in the capacity to realise and reflect the subtle traits which in inferior hands are overlooked or brushed aside in a comprehensive generalisation. Mr. Irving never neglects the little things which go far to sustain the unity of a character, nor does he deal with them with any seeming art. Having carefully and closely studied his part, he is simply consistent alike in the more marked features and in the lesser details. Hence it is that in the new drama he is a thorough rogue, and the instinctive shrinking from him is only an evidence of the cleverness with which Mr. Irving has succeeded in his self-imposed task.

Miss Bufton is endowed with graces of person and manner that make her addition to the company very acceptable; and, while it must be added that she is somewhat stagey, we would hope that in another drama she may be seen to more advantage. Mrs. Stephens is loquacious, curious, and mischief-making as Mrs. Bolton Jones, and is a capital specimen of Sheridan's type of scandal mongers transferred to modern days.

In conclusion, we can only repeat our desire that this excellent company may be seen in Manchester in some sterling drama.