DICKENS ON THE STAGE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1649, 7 October 1903, Page 29

DICKENS ON THE STAGE.

• The great revival of Dickens at Home has led to the production at the Adelphi Theatre, London, of a dramatisation of " David’Copperfield” under the name of " Peggotty's Darlings” by T. G. Warren and Ben Landeok. An adaptation of " Martin Chuzzlewit ” entitled " Tom Pinch” has for a long time been one of Mr. Willard's greatest ©ucoesges, and " The Cricket on the Hearth ” is being revived in London. . The reason of this welcome revival of the works upon the stage is attributable to the great success achieved by Mr. Martin Harvey in "The Only Way/’ which play will serve still further to immortalise that powerful work, " A Tale of Two Cities.” Indignation was caused in London some years ago by the production jvt the Opera Co unique of an American adaptation of " The Old Curiosity Shop,” wherein the most curious, but not the most treasured article of all, was a cheeky Little Nell in silks and frills and highheeled shoes, who cheered herself in her affliction with the worse affliction of a banjo, and performed dances when she ought to have been saying her prayers ! It was a very shooking business altogether, and the faces of the critics—those of Mr. Moy Thomas and Mr. William Archer especially—were set with the expression of insufferable gloom, to which there came no relieving lighv When Quilp fell into the Thame®., and Little Nell, who arrived in time to witness his final struggles for life, picked up his hat from the wharf and tossed it to him with the , feeling remark, "Hi ! You’ve left some of your luggage ”