A. French Manager on English Theatres.

Evening Star, Issue 7259, 9 July 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

A. French Manager on English Theatres.

M. Claretie, the director of the Theatre Francais (says the New York 'Evening Post'*) has communicated to a French journalist some of the impressions which he bore away with him after his recent short Btay in London. He owes to the evening which he spent at the Lyceum, he declared, the first cleat realisation of his ideas qf the fantastic. The spectacular effects altogether transcended, he made no difficulty in acknowledging, anything ever seen| in the Parisian theatres. Faust's sudden disappearance, followed by a blaze of electric light, was by far the most startling thing he had ever seen on any stage. It gave him the impression of a miracle enaoted before his eyes; and the sensation persisted even after the trick was explained to him. He pronounced Mr Irving a "great artist," though rather "cold" as French notions of acting go. He visited Drury Lane also. He was struck not so much with the magnificence of the spectacle as with the rapidity with which the innumerable changes and transformations were effected. The stage management was carried to such a degree of perfection that " Ali Baba " suggested to him the idea rather of a huge machine or an enormous piece of clockwork than of a piece per. formed by living actors.