RIVAL MANAGERS — MR. MORRIS AND M. CHEDEL.
WE are not going to speak of liberality to Mr. MORRIS; but simply, as a question of prudence, to ask whether the Haymarket Theatre was likely to be benefited by his prosecuting M. CHEDEL for per- formingFrench plays, twice a-week,in Tottenham-court Road? These performances were little known; the manager apparently had not learnt the art of advertising, or was unacquainted with the channels of puffery ; and the audiences were almost exclusively French,—peo- ple who, were their theatre shut to-morrow, would scarcely be tempted to enter Mr. MORRIS'S, to see their favourite pieces man- gled and disfigured in an English translation. But Mr. MORRIS pretends to be alarmed ; and Mr. P. FARREN has the worthy task imposed on him of tempting the pit-door-keeper of M. CHEDEL'S theatre with half.a-crown. The pit-door-keeper's virtue yields ; Mr. P. FARREN swears to the monstrous fact ; and poor M. CHE- DEL is fined fifty pounds. We do not know if it is paying dear for a very useful lesson. The Frenchman, in an excess of hand-bills and paste, appeals to the sympathies of a British public ; and next night his house, from being half filled, is overflowing with the good-humoured of both nations. A hundred to one that he now betters his instruction. But we are ashamed of Mr. MORRIS. We know no man more indebted to the French theatre than he is : he has borrowed, begged, and stolen from it ; he and his company have lived upon it ; what successful piece has he produced that has not been a translation from the French ? We dare say he would ra- ther we did not see the originals ; but he ought not to have thrust himself forward to put them down.
One word to M. CHEDEL. He has been taught that in London above all places ilfaut s'eicher ; but he must be industrious as 'well as advertising : the performances of Wednesday last were shamefully ill played, scarcely any of the actors having learnt their parts. M. BOUCHEZ, though an unequal performer, is worth seeing. As Palaprat, in "Brueys et Palaprat," he is tolerable ; he plays the hussar with great truth and vigour in " Sans Tambour ni Trompette" and "Le Mariage a la Houssarde ;" but his masterpiece, we think is the character of SoiWleur in "Le Bent(fi- ciaire,"—a piece of M. CHEDEL'S rc*rtOire, by the by, which Mr. MORRIS has borrowed, and is at this moment rehearsing a translation of, under the title of "Management, or the Prompter Puzzled." We are ashamed of Mr. MORRIS. M. BOUCHEZ excels in making the most extravagant conceptions of his author seem na- tural and true on the stage; the most ludicrous characters become in his hands representations of life. On the English stage, the rule is for the character to be tame, and the acting extravagant. M. BOUCHEZ is a performer at the Theatre des Varietes : to judge of the vast inferiority of the English in acting, we have only to com- pare him with the loudest of those that exhibit on the boards of the minor theatres of London. We except the Adelphi, the pleasantest of playhouses, at home or abroad.
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