AMUSEMENTS.

Evening Star, Issue 4337, 22 January 1877, Page 2

AMUSEMENTS.

THE TEMPERANCE HALL. The efforts of Messrs Kohler and Bent are deserving ®f more encouragement than they receive, for it is difficult to find men in their line who work harder to please. However, what their audiences lack in numbers they moke up for in enthusiasm, os the various items on the programme are encored nightly. THE QUEEN'S. The feature of Saturday night’s entertainment was Mdlle. Franzini’s performance on the bicycle. Undoubtedly she is very clever, and her principal act of wheeling her steed among innumerable bottles, placed at short distances from each other, without touching any of them, deserves to be seen. To-night she repeats what she did on Saturday, and the regular company appear in “ Fra Hiavolo ” and give a concert. .= • |THE PRINCESS’S.

The announcement that Mrs Scott-Siddons would appear os the heroine of Bulwer Lytton’s well-known drama, “ The Lady of Lyons,•' had the effect of filling the Princess’s Theatre on Saturday night. The character of Pauline Desobappelles baa been frequently played in this City, and often very creditably ; but we do not think we shall be doubted when we affirm that they are all far and away inferior to the portrait drawn by Mrs ScottSiddons. Not tbnt her representation was without faults. In the first two acta it occurred to us that hor gestures were too angular—that the graceful ease she exhibited in Juliet and Bosaind was absent, and that her intonation was inclined to be drawling; but in the third and subsequent acts sho warmed up into eloquence both of speech and action, and completely dispelled any doubts wo |.inter tain ed as to her aliity to interpret the character of the Lyonese beauty. Such a manifestation of disgust and indig-nation-mingled with a scarcely-bom love for Claude—as she exhibited in the cottage seene was a treat the like of which we scarcely hope to seo again, and when, in the last scene, she is about to sign the marriage contract to save her father, her acting was something to be remembered. Mr Darrell looked, according to our ideas, more like a first murderer in the earlier parts of the play than the open, ingenuous young gardener; but he, too, improved as the drama proceeded, and played excellently, especially in the duel scene. The applause which g-qated tho love-making in the garden was deafening, and was desoi vodly bestowed. The Colonel was in tho hands of Mr Deoring, who, however, did not shine in the character. Mr Stonehau was a modorately-good Beausoant j but some of the minor parts were spoiled by that miserable substitute for study—” gag.” For to-night “The Merchant of Venice ” is promised, and Mrs Scott-Siddons as Portia should be a groat treat.