Transcription
ASTLEY’S AMPHITHEATRE.
This popular place of entertainment opened yesterday evening for the usual summer season, under the management of Messrs. Ducrow and West, jun., and, judging from the applause which attended the novelties presented by those fortunate careers for the public, the season at its termination will prove to have been a most prosperous one to the lessees. The novelty prepared for the holyday folks was announced “as a new grand, equestrian, historical, military romance, founded on the Crimean war of independence, entitled The Conqueror’s Steed, or the Prophet of the Caucasus. To attempt to describe the plot would, especially on an Easter Monday night, be almost impossible, and suffice it therefore to say that the piece formed the vehicle for some splendid dramatic tableaux, gorgeous processions, spirit-stirring scenes by flood and field, and some admirably executed and highly effective scenery. The spectacle was got up and put upon the stage with all that attention which has acquired for Mr. Ducrow so much well-deserved celebrity, and was rapturously applauded at the fall of the curtain by a good-tempered and tolerably quiet audience. The scenes in the circle followed, and reintroduced all the old established favourites to the visitors of the house, including Mr. Stickney, Mr. Hicken, “Le petit Ducrow,” and the never-to-be-forgotten master of the ring, Mr. Widdicomb. A Mademoiselle Lee made a debut as the sylph, and went through with great skill some pleasing feats of horsemanship, while the flexible Felix Carlo and his pupil made their first appearances and performed some astounding tricks in tumbling and posturing. Both these artistes were loudly and most deservedly applauded. The evening’s entertainments concluded at a seasonable hour with an afterpiece called The Beggar and the Soldier; or the Thieves of Dijon, which we fancy, under a different title, we have before, seen enacted. Be that as it may, it met the approbation of the majority of the audience, who from first to last seemed to relish the bill of fare which was presented them.
