THE CRITIC

Observer, Volume 1, Issue 21, 5 February 1881, Page 207

THE CRITIC

Clara Stephenson goes to Australia shortly. Dampier, now in England, returns to Sydney in April. Teddy Haygarth is playing in "Goody Two Shoes " at tlie Academy of Music, Melbourne. — Anton Rubinstein's superb opera "Nero" has been successfully produced in Berlin. The Lynch Bellringers are going to visit Java and the East. Louise Poraeroy is 2S years old, single, and said to be worth £30,000. Miss May Holt (Mrs. Fail-burn) has returned to the stage, playing the dual role of Eunice and Bel Lorimer with her father's "New Babylon" Company. Mr. George Coppin will retire from the stage at the end of the present lease of the Theatre Royal, Melbourne. It cost £800 to bring the new opera bouffe company from London to Melbourne. Three times that sum has already been realised. The forty circusses now travelling in America cost an average of £8000 or less, and their daily expenses do not average over £80. The complimentary benefit, at Dunedin, to Mrs. J. B. Steele was a great success, and realised a handsome dividend. — The heir to one of the oldest baronetcies in England has offered his hand and heart to pretty Kate Lawler, the fair manageress of the London Boyalty Theatre. The family arc furious. — Mr. De Belleville, who travelled with the Lingards for a time, is described by Sarah Bernhardt as not only a great actor, but the handsomest man on the French stage. Lovers of the legitimate drama will be glad to learn that Miss Pomeroy, who has achieved such a high degree of popularity in Australia, will most probably appear in New Zealand about May. Mr. Grattan Riggs and the Burford-Clinton company are doing good business in the Wellington district. At latest advices they were playing at the Town Hall, Masterton, for three nights. A tribe of North American Indians, headed by their princess Marie Lulu, a beautiful, highly-edu-cated girl, are shortly to appear in England in " The Queen of the Forest," written especially for them. "Terrible Terry" is the title of a comedy, in three acts, of which Mr. James Izett, of the Star, Christchurch, is the author. The scene is cast at a squatter's station in Victoria, and the Kelly scare is utilized to wort out the denoument. " Terrible Terry " will probably be first produced in Australia. Under the title of Cleopatra's Needle, Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke have introduced a novel illusiion. The needle, which is apparently an empty frame, is placed on a stand, and from it issue several living figures. The mystery is how the figures get there, the frame being to all appearance, isolated. The other night, at the Wellington theatre, an accurately dress-clothes'd man was the only spectator in the dresscircle. By-and-bye he pulled out a cigar case, and began to smoke. They threatened to turn Mm* out if he did not desist. He said he was obliged to smoke because he was so lonely. Couldn't they turn some other people in ? — The new tragedy by Mr. Tennyson -which is to be produced at the Lyceum, will be mounted in a style which will surpass other efforts at the same theatre. The subject is classical, the heroine being a priestess. The final scene will take place in the interior of a Greek temple in Aisa Minor, which will be planned on such a scale as may suggest the magnificence of pagan ritual. A good stoiy is told of Mr. Herman Vezin. As the well-known actor was going down the Strand he was jostled by a rough. The affair led to a little altercation, and Mr. Vezin passed on, and a bystander said to his assailant, ''Do you know who that was? It was Herman Vezin." "Why didn't you tell me before?" was the reply ; "If I'd 'aye know'd, I'd 'aye hasked 'im for a horder." During his Dunedin engagement, Mr. Bandmann wrote to the Daily Times offering, if the members of the Presbyterian Synod wish to attend the theatre, "to play any Shakespearian piece they might suggest, and provide the best seats in the house for them and their families without any charge whatsoever." But the members of the Synod failed to view the matter with seriousness. "Deseret," an American opera, the music by Dudley Buck, an able musician and well-known composer of popular church music, etc., and the libretto from W ' A. Croffutt, a New York journalist, was given its first recital at Haverley's Fourteenth-street Theatre, Nov. 11. The story tells of the loves of Major Clem of ,the United States' Army, stationed near Salt Lake City, and Rosamond, a Mormon's daughter, who has been promised to a certain Elder named Scram for his twenty-fifth, wile. It shows the Elder's trials with, his double dozen of helpmates.