The Examiner.
The Examiner.
The Examiner.
The Examiner.
March 3, 1816.
Farquhar’s Comedy of the Recruiting Officer was revived at Drury-Lane Theatre on Tuesday, when Mrs. Mardyn appeared as Sylvia. She looked very charmingly in it while she continued in her femaledress, and displayed some good acting, particularly in the scene where Plume gives her his will to read; but we did not like her at all as Young Wilful, with her jockey coat, breeches, and boots. Her dress seemed as if contrived on purpose to hide the beauties of her natural shape, and discover its defects. A woman in Hessian boots can no more move gracefully under such an additional and unusual incumbrance to her figure, than a man could with a clog round each leg. We hope that she will re-cast her male attire altogether, if she has not already done it. The want of vivacity and elegance in her appearance gave a flatness to the latter part of the comedy, which was not relieved by the circumstance of Mr. Rae’s forgetting his part. We do not think he played the airy, careless, lively Captain Plume well; and Mr. Harley did not playCaptainBrazen, butSerjeantBrazen. Johnstone’s Serjeant Kite was not very happy. Johnstone’s impudence is good-humoured and natural, Serjeant Kite’s is knavish impudence. Johnstone is not exactly fitted for any character, the failings of which do not lean to the amiable side. There was one speech which entirely suited him, and that was where he says to his Captain, ‘The mob are so pleased with your Honour, and the justices and better sort of people are so delighted with me, that we shall soon do our business!’ Munden’s Costar Pearmain, and Knight’s Thomas Appletree, were a double treat. Knight’s fixed, rivetted look at the guinea, accompanied with the exclamation, ‘Oh the wonderful works of Nature!’ and Munden’s open-mouthed, reeling wonder, were in the best style of broad comic acting. If any thing, this scene was even surpassed by that in which Munden, after he has listed with Plume, makes his approximations to his friend, who is whimpering, and casting at him a most inviting ogle, with an expression of countenance all over oily and lubricated, emphatically ejaculates, ‘Well, Tummy!’ We have no wish to see better acting than this. This actor has won upon our good opinion, and we here retract openly all that we have said disrespectfully of his talents, generally speaking. Miss Kelly’s Rose was playedcon amore; it was an exquisite exhibition of rusticnaiveté. Her riding on the basket as a side-saddle, was very spirited and well contrived. Passion expresses itself in such characters by a sort of uneasy bodily vivacity, which no actress gives so well as Miss Kelly. We ought not to omit, that she cries her chickens in a good shrill huswifely market-voice, as if she would drive a good bargain with them. Mr. Powell played Justice Balance as well as if he had been the Justice himself.
The Recruiting Officer is not one of Farquhar’s best comedies, though it is lively and entertaining. It contains merely sketches ofcharacters, and the conclusion of the plot is rather lame. He informs us in the dedication to the published play, that it was founded on some local and personal circumstances that happened in Shropshire, where he was a recruiting officer, and it seems not unlikely that most of the scenes actually took place near the foot of the Wrekin.