Royal Adelphi Theatre Seasonal Digest for 1872-1873
Ed. Frank McHugh & Gilbert Cross
Messrs. Webster and Chatterton thoroughly refurbished the auditorium of the Adelphi during the summer recess of 1872:
On Saturday night, the Adelphi re-opened its doors in a condition of unwonted brilliancy. Profiting by the designs of Mr. J. T. Robinson, it had thoroughly cleansed and re-decorated itself from the floor to the ceiling, which, always classical in form, now displayed a combination of delicate and harmonious tints. While it had studied splendour it had shrunk instinctively from the heavy, and the panels of its boxes look gay and refreshing in their new array of gold. It had also studied the comfort of the occupants of the boxes by providing them with a ventilation previously unknown (Times, 17 September 1872, p. 5).
The program for opening night, too, seemed designed to restore old Adelphi glories, for once again The Green Bushes headed the bill and Mme. Céleste once again took the role of Miami, "a part which she first played no matter how many years ago" (Times, p. 5). The second piece, C. L. Kenney's farce Autumn Manoeuvres, had played 85 times in the preceding season.
After 42 performances, Green Bushes gave way to H. J. Byron's Mabel's Life. Mme. Céleste remained with the company for the run of this piece, and while the Athenæum was critical of Byron's play, this "poorest and flimsiest production its author has yet given to the stage," it praised Mme. Céleste, who "evinced a breadth of style such as no English actress imparts to melodrama" (9 November 1872, p. 607). The Times also noted the "singular power" of Céleste's performance and praised the acting of John Clarke and Mrs. Alfred Mellon (4 November 1872, p. 8). A two-level stage was used at times, so that the audience saw "the unholy trio in the shop plotting the death of Mabel while the proposed victim is innocently tending her birds in the room above." A change of scene "in which the basement of a house sinks, revealing the first story, is one of the most remarkable effects stage-machinery has yet obtained" (Athenæum, p. 607). However, the play, written apparently in haste by a busy and prolific author and actor, had its defects. According to the Times, "a few dissenting voices" in the audience were raised. According to the Athenæum, "marks of disapproval at one time threatened to bring the whole to a premature conclusion." The play ran for only four weeks.
December brought the first hit of the season, the loosely-structured Adventures of Fritz, which displayed the talents of the American actor J. K. Emmet and had done so in America, the bills said, for "upwards of 1000 nights." The Athenæum, not given to easy praise, saw Emmet as a great entertainer if not a great actor:
Mr. Emmet sings easily and well, and his dancing is the best we have seen. Repeatedly mere beauty of movement extorted, from an audience not apt to overprize grace or refinement of any kind, an enthusiastic encore (7 December 1872, p. 740).
Although The Adventures of Fritz was so popular the Times thought Benjamin Webster would not offer a Christmas novelty this year, Charles Millward's burlesque Jack and the Beanstalk was given. The Times saw it as "a bright and pleasant piece, and it is well acted throughout." It noted especially the acting of Caroline Parks, Charlotte Saunders and John Clarke (27 December 1872, p. 8). In the spring, Green Bushes returned with Miss Furtado playing Miami. The Times commented, "This popular house is now in a normal condition, the perennial Green Bushes once more flourishing on its stage" (17 March 1873, p. 7). Teresa Furtado (Mrs. John Clarke) performed for nine seasons in the Adelphi Company. Erroll Sherson describes her as "a very pretty actress, who ... made a great hit as various heroines of melodrama" (London's Lost Theatres of the Nineteenth Century, p. 274).
Other theatrical perennials that appeared for very short runs included The Beggar's Opera, playing 12 times, and The Stone Jug, a version of Buckstone's Jack Sheppard, modified in its title and other details to satisfy new requirements of the Lord Chamberlain's office, playing 13 times. The Athenæum thought the original Jack Sheppard succeeded because of its actors. "When now presented by a company of incapables, its faults become painfully evident" (29 March 1873, p. 417).
The second great success of the 1872-1873 season was Leopold Lewis' The Wandering Jew, which played 151 times between 22 March and 1 October. Lewis, the Times said, managed to reduce the complicated novel of Eugene Sue to meet the conditions of spectacle and melodrama. In addition, his efforts were aided by the appearance of the great Benjamin Webster in a leading role, even if, like Mme. Céleste, Webster was no longer in his prime:
anyone ought to appreciate the finished acting and thoroughly artistic 'make up' of Mr. Webster as the arch plotter Rodin, into whose every gesture he infuses a distinct meaning. The voice of the veteran actor is no longer, what it was, and occasionally his words are scarcely audible, but his by-play as Rodin is always eloquent, and many are the attitudes into which he silently settles himself which would form an admirable study for a painter. The facial expression is true throughout (6 April 1873, p. 60).
Rodin was the last new role Webster ever played. In 1874, he announced his retirement from the stage.
This season ended on 1 October 1873, after 321 performances.
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Royal Adelphi Theatre Seasonal Digest for 1873-1874
Ed. Frank McHugh & Gilbert Cross
Frederick Chatterton became lessee as well as manager this season. He and Webster opened the season on 8 November, with The Green Bushes. The Times cited the anecdote of the traveler who, "however often he was abroad, and at whatever intervals he returned home ... was sure to find Green Bushes in the Adelphi program." "Independently of its merits as perhaps one of the best constructed and most interesting melodramas ever brought out upon any stage," the Times said, "it is a great historical fact in the theatrical annals of this century" (13 November 1873, p. 5). Mme. Céleste appeared, as the bills promised, for twelve nights only.
Immediately after this, another stock melodrama, Edmund Falconer's Peep O'Day was offered. Falconer, an accomplished stage Irishman, played his original role of Barney O'Toole. What the bills called this "great Irish sensational drama" played for a full 14 weeks. The Times said that though "it was never played at the Adelphi before Saturday, it is to all intents and purposes an Adelphi piece, reflecting the taste for subjects connected with Irish peasant life which, 12 years ago, had been newly awakened by the Colleen Bawn of Mr. Dion Boucicault" (24 November 1873, p. 5). The Christmas novelty, offered with Peep O'Day, was Killarney, written by Falconer. Balfe was the composer, Cormack the choreographer and Telbin the scene designer. The Times admired Telbin's "moving picture of the Lakes of Killarney" (27 December 1873, p. 5).
On 31 January, Mr. and Mrs. John Billington returned to the Adelphi to star in the third melodrama of the season, Rough and Ready, a new play by Paul Merritt. The plot, which pitted a gamekeeper against a gentleman, made both the Times and Athenæum reviewers uneasy. The Times commented, "The plot is at once slight and complicated, and there is overmuch of vapid dialogue, here and there spiced with democratic clap-trap." Nevertheless, it praised John Billington: "He is a thorough master of the required dialect, and his delineation of a frank, generous nature, usually amiable, but capable of being stung into the most violent rage, is perfect" (6 February 1874, p. 3). "Rough and Ready," the Athenæum said, "bears marks of its East End origins. Proletarian virtue throughout its three acts is at war with aristocratic vice, which it in the end overpowers." It praised Mr. Billington, "unequalled in presenting unpleasant parts" (7 February 1874, p. 203).
The Billingtons were, by now, familiar figures on the London stage; John had left the Theatre Royal, York to make his London debut as Harry Mobray in Langford's Like and Unlike. Adeline had joined him the following year when she played Venus in Harlequin and the Loves of Cupid and Psyche. Among the many roles Mrs. Billington had created was Mrs. Valentine in Rough and Ready. Her husband had been in the original London casts of The Colleen Bawn, The Octoroon, Rip Van Winkle, and The Hunchback. He was the first performer in many roles such as Sir Percival Glyde in The Woman in White (1871), Martin Gurder in Dead Man's Point (1871), and Mark Musgrave in Rough and Ready (Adams, Dictionary of the Drama, p. 159).
The ambitious Elizabeth; or, The Exiles of Siberia, staged to honor the Duke of Edinburgh and his new bride, failed and was withdrawn after 16 performances. This adaptation of Frederick Reynold's 1808 work offered little the audience could respond to except for a last-act "fete on the frozen Neva," an extravagant spectacle. However, Oxenford's modest comedy Waltz by Arditi, which opened on the same night, triumphed and ran for 143 nights. It impressed its audiences, the Times said, "simply through the goodness of the acting" (9 March 1874, p. 8).
Another resounding success, Benjamin Webster's Prayer in the Storm, a version of a French play popular in many forms in Britain and America, opened on 28 March and ran 143 nights until 11 September. The American actress Genevieve Ward, new to London, was much praised in this piece, as was the staging of the "Sea of Ice" tableau, with its skillfully contrived sensational effects. Erroll Sherson calls Genevieve Ward "undoubtedly one of the greatest actresses that ever trod the London stage." She had a prior career as an opera singer under the name Guerrabella. He said of Prayer in the Storm, "The great sensation scene was a floating block of ice on a raging sea with a maiden kneeling on it and praying earnestly for help. This never failed to bring down the house" (London's Lost Theatres of the Nineteenth Century, p. 111).
Comedies and some ballets helped carry the great melodramas throughout this long Adelphi season. In late spring, the ballet farce Magic Toys, an adaptation of a French vaudeville by John Oxenford, opened and held the boards for 66 nights, "thanks to the agility and spirit of Miss Kate Vaughan who, in her representation of the supposed 'Toy' unites to a remarkable degree the qualities of the danseuse and the actress, and the arch simplicity of Miss Hudspeth, who plays the ingénue" (Times, 11 May 1874, p. 14).
Performances continued throughout the summer and into the fall of 1874, so the editors have arbitrarily chosen 1 October 1874 as the end of the 1873-1874 season.
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