THEATRICAL GOSSIP.

Evening Star, Issue 8398, 26 December 1890, Page 3

THEATRICAL GOSSIP.

Miss Fortescue, " the loved and lost one ' of tae lato Lord Cairns, is shortly to make her appearancs in London as the heroine in a revival of ' Romeo and Juliet.' Romeo is to he played by Mr Vanderfelt, a young Arrorican actor, who has won some distiucticT as Robert EUmere in an American drama founded on the novel of that name. The death i* announced of Mdlle. Jeanne Samaiy, of the Comcdie Frarjeiise. She war» one of the best soubrettes on the French and shono alike in the comedies of Moliure and in those which belong to the pr~;ent day. In Ihete days there is nothing aacred from the parodist. The version of ' The Bride of uuimermoor,' presented at the Lyceum, m accordingly about to be travestied by Mr Burnand. The skit on Mr Herman Meriva'e's piece will be entitled ' The Ma?her of Raven^wood.' A Germau version of Gilbert and Sullivan's 'Gondoliers' was performed for the fir t time at the Theatre an der Wien, Vienna, and proved a big success. The mn-.io was more appreciated than the text. Ti?o dresses which Madame Sara Bernhardt is to wear in Sardou'a 'Cleopatre,' at the Porte St. Martin, though only five in number, are said to represent a value of Ll.' ; CO. Happily for the management, the ren:ain'rig 400 necessary for the piece have bc-i acquired on Ices ruinous terms. James D. Doherty, who has been known for aome time past as the " crazy admirer" of Miss Mary Anderson (Mrs Navarro), murde."d the assistant - superintendent of the Brooklyn Asylum on October 9. Mr Joseph Jefferton'a delightful autobiography is brought to a close in the October number of the 'Century' with a fiuhl instalment, richer, perhaps, than any of itu predecessors in anecdotes of contemporaries and in interesting observations on the art of acting. Some of the stories relate to the writer's famous impersonation of Rip Van Winkle. Mr Jefferson tells us that in the village of Catskill, so closely associated with Washington Irving's immortal legend, there is a Rip Van Winkle Club, which once did him the honor to invite him to play this character on the very scene of Rip'a long slumber. The invitation wa3 accepted, and the actor was met at the entrance to the village by the president and other members of ;he club, including a young Nicholas Vender, who claimed to be a eon of the original *'Old Nick." Theinhabitants had tunied a skating rink into a theatre for the occasion, and great excitement prevailed in the place. This is illustrated by a story of a. colored wa'ttr at the hotel, who, while Mr Jefferson was taking a cup of tea, was giving a graphic and detailed account of the legend to a stiv.nger sitting nearly opposite. " Yes, sah," he continued, "Rip went up into de mountains, slept for twenty years, and when he came back hyar in dis berry town his own folks didn't know him." " Why," said his listener, "you don't believe the story s true?" "True? Ob course it is. Why," pointing at Mr Jefferson, ''dat's de man." The village was filled with farmers and their wives who had come from far and wide in that mountainous district to see presented the story which Washington Irving had laid almost at their doors. The culminating 1 point in the enthusiasm of the spectators

appears to have been reached when Rip, having to ask "Is this the village of Falling Water?" the actor ventured to alter the text, and substitute •« the village of Catskill."