Transcription
[Image of horse and rider being pulled back as they cross a bridge.]
SCENE FROM THE PANTOMIME OF “HARLEQUIN TAM O’SHANTER,” AT ASTLEY’S.
ASTLEY’S THEATRE.
A regular Christmas pantomime at this house is quite a novelty; it being many years since a Harlequinade was produced here; which seems rather strange, considering its resources and capabilities for such kind of performances. Nothing could have been better chosen than the subject of the present one, which is funded on Burns’s admirable tale, and is entitled, “Harlequin Tam O’Shanter and his Steed Meg, or the Fairy Thistledown and Witches of Alloway Kirk.” The poet’s story is closely adhered to in the main, with a liberal addition of fairies, sprites, and demons, necessary to the well-being of a legitimate pantomime. Some of the scenery in the introduction is most admirably contrived, particularly the flight of Tam through the storm, on his mare Meg, followed by the witches of “Auld Alloway’s Haunted Kirk,” which made many a heart thrill, so widely supernatural the chase seems. At length the safety bridge—“The brig o’ Doon”—appears in sight, and Tam exclaims, in Rab’s own words:--
Now do thy utmost speed, my Meg,
And win the keystone of the brig;
Then at them thou thy tail may toss—
A running stream they dare not cross.
For all this poor Meggie loses her tail, and the tale of the introduction ends also by usual transformations. In the comic portion there was a most ludicrous scene in the interior of a nursery, where six babies are sleeping in six separate cradles. The humour of the Clown (King) and Pantaloon (Matthews) in this was such as to convulse the audience to an unparalleled paroxysm of laughter. The pantomime was altogether most ably sustained. Between the pieces there was some most fearfully dextrous rope-dancing by Mons. Plege and his sons, which, in itself, is well worth the whole performance at some other establishment.
