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“HENRY DUNBAR” AT THE OLYMPIC THEATRE.

Miss Braddon's striking but most improbable story has been very cleverly reduced to dramatic form by Mr. Tom Taylor. He has with great skill got rid of the difficulty of having to introduce the real Henry Dunbar, and yet managed to make the action of the piece intelligible to those who have never read the novel. And so far as it is possible to keep alive some shred of interest in the scamp and murderer on whom the action turns, Mr. Taylor has certainly managed to do so. But he has had most ungracious materials to work with. For, after all, Wilmot's crime is thoroughly odious, whatever face is put upon it, and the throes of a sordid villain become, as might be expected, very wearisome; and one cannot help wishing, long before the final act of the piece is reached, that the coils in which he is ultimately caught would close somewhat more rapidly around him. A great crime is no doubt always telling in a drama, but if harped upon incessantly through four acts the interest is apt to lapse into something very like weariness. Still, with all its faults, “Henry Dunbar” is an excellent piece of its kind, thoroughly well put upon the stage, and carefully acted throughout. The resources of the company have been called fully into play, none of the parts are slighted, and the result is that the performance leaves an impression of completeness, which is rare indeed on our English stage. For this inestimable merit the manager of the Olympic Theatre has always, where the piece was not too much for his actors, been rewarded by success, and “Henry Dunbar” bids fair to prove no exception.

Miss Terry has many of the qualities requisite for Margaret Wilmot, the heroine of the piece, and will probably add to her rising reputation by the performance. In our judgment, however, there is a want of directness and simplicity in the performance—too little, in a word, of continuous earnest emotion, too much of melodramatic effect. This often gives a jerkiness and spasmodic character to Miss Terry's style, against which she cannot be too much upon her guard. She has the knowledge and ease of the experienced actress, but we look in a lady of so much promise for something more than this. She should let nature have more way with her, and, having thoroughly identified herself in feeling with the part, leave the emotions proper to it to find more spontaneous expression. Her smiles and her passion are alike too abrupt. The one is not heralded by the gradual relaxing of the muscles which speaks of the smile in the heart, nor the other by the gathering up of the whole frame which predicts the storm before it comes. The forms of joy or grief are there, but the things themselves are not there, and so our hearts are too often left untouched. If Miss Terry would live into her characters more, she would become indeed what unwise admirers call her now, a fine actress. This she can never be until it can be said of her, as Lessing said of Mdme. Henzel, “No word drops from her lips without its effect. What she says, she has not learned; it comes from her own head, from her own heart. Whether she is speaking or whether she is not, her impersonation goes unbrokenly on.” This power of continuous development, so that every look, word, gesture is in harmony, and helps, touch by touch, to complete the picture of the person presented, is what distinguishes the true artist from the merely clever actor. Why should Miss Terry stop short of this, as at present she unquestionably does? A word, too, on a matter of detail. Margaret Wilmot is a poor girl, living by giving singing lessons, and walking to and fro in her vocation. Is it not out of all nature to dress her as Miss Terry does, with gowns which drag a full yard on the ground? In a drama so realistic, such a detail as this is surely a serious blunder. Mr. H. Neville has contrived at last to shake off some of his Tom Brierly manner, and performs Wilmot so well that one is vexed he should not perform it better; nothing more admirable than his “make up” could be desired. It is hard, perhaps, to give life and variety to the part; for the tortures of a man with the gallows always staring him in the face must perforce be somewhat monotonous; but Mr. Neville is at times a shade too lugubrious, a trifle too lachrymose. He scarcely throws enough of hardness and defiant recklessness into his manner for either truth to nature or for dramatic effect. But although there is a general want of light and shade about his performance, it is in many parts admirable—as, for example, in his first scene and in the scene with his old pal, Major Vallancey, in the banking house. This Major Vallancey, by the way, is the best part in the piece. The author has done much for it; but the actor, Mr. Vincent, does more. The presence of the man proclaims the character before he utters one word, and speech and gesture accord with his exterior. The seedy, disreputable, unscrupulous blackguard, by birth and training a gentleman, could scarcely be better represented. In striking his first impression, Mr. Vincent runs slightly into caricature, but after the first scene the character is as real as life itself. The scene with Wilmot in the banking-house, already referred to, and that in Wilmot's study, are both masterly. Such quiet force, such intensity without exaggeration, such downright truth of delineation, would of themselves make this piece well worth seeing. A detective, played with great tact and easy humour by Mr. Soutar, helps materially to carry it pleasantly along. The other parts, though of less moment, are extremely well made out by the performers to whom they have been entrusted.