AMUSEMENTS.
"In Old Kentucky" played to excellent business at the Lansing last night. It is a well staged melo-drama so far as elaborate scenery goes. The mountain scenery in the first act was striking and realistic. The company is a fairly good one. It carries some negroes who can dance, a pickaninny band that can make considerable noise and a dusky little tonductor who can swing the baton with the best of them.
Miss Tabor compared rather favorably with Miss Burt , and Burt Charles as Colonel Sandusky Doolittle is a good deal of a Kentuckian. He uses the accent without exaggerating it and makes up well as a southerner of the old school. Frank Ross makes a sufficiently noble hero. Walter Edwards does much better as Joe Lowery than as the virtuous young ensign last season. He still has a few melo-dramatic tricks like his heavenward roll of the eyes and the declamatory manner in impressive passages.
The play has less in its situations than in its scenery. It is a successful play and has the faculty of working up an audience to a pitch of wild enthusiasm as it did last night, but that does not mean that it is a strong play or a good one. It abounds in gun powder and virtue and moth-eaten phrases about honor. It has the merit of having a text and sticking to it, but the text is not new and is scarcely worth a sermon four acts long.
Notes
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