Little Nell and the marchioness

Event Information

Venue(s):
Niblo's Garden

Proprietor / Lessee:
Henry C. Jarrett
Henry Palmer

Conductor(s):
Giuseppe Operti

Event Type:
Play With Music

Record Information

Status:
Published

Last Updated:
9 January 2021

Performance Date(s) and Time(s)

01 Nov 1869, Evening
02 Nov 1869, Evening
03 Nov 1869, Evening
04 Nov 1869, Evening
05 Nov 1869, Evening
06 Nov 1869, Evening
06 Nov 1869, 2:00 PM

Performers and/or Works Performed

Citations

1)
Advertisement: New York Herald, 01 November 1869, 12.

“In the course of the piece Miss LOTTA will introduce her celebrated BANJO SOLOS, CLOG AND JIG DANCES, SONGS, &C. Likewise will be presented AN OLD ENGLISH MORRIS DANCE, ACROBATIC FEATS by those well known performers, Messrs Shappee & Whitney, and the wonders of a FAIR AT HIGHGATE.”

2)
Announcement: New-York Times, 01 November 1869, 4.
3)
Advertisement: New-York Times, 01 November 1869, 7.
4)
Review: New-York Times, 02 November 1869, 3.

No mention of music.

5)
Review: New-York Daily Tribune, 03 November 1869, 8.

Long review. “. . . [Miss Lotta] seldom personates characters that are foreign to her own, but is usually herself, and herein consist her merit and her success. A merrier little being it would be difficult to find, or to imagine. She plays over the stage as a sunbeam on the water, and she awakens in every heart the fondness which lies dormant there for sweet children and for pets in general. To judge her representations in the stern mood of criticism would be unnatural and harsh. Everyone knows that her Little Nell is rather wooden, and that her Marchioness is not a bit like the Marchioness in Dickens’s novel. But everyone also knows that her sweetness, in the former part, and her comical absurdity, in the latter, are very agreeable. They proved so to a numerous audience, on Monday night, at Niblo’s Garden. Miss Lotta was called before the curtain at the end of the first act, and again at the end of the fourth; and throughout the play was cheered by laughter and applause. Her general sprightliness, her agility in the clog-dance, her skill in performing on the banjo, her volatile and irrepressible mischievousness of temperament and behavior were as piquant as ever, and wrought the same effect—that of general hilarity. Her Little Nell and her Marchioness have been seen before on the local stage, and do not require description. In spirit and in details they are the same as they were at first. Only one change has been made—in the substitution of a silly street song for the homely North of England ballad which Miss Lotta used to sing in the Fair scene—and that is, most distinctly, a change for the worse. The audience, however, did not seem to notice it. . . . With reference to Miss Lotta’s personal presence at Niblo’s Garden,—it  is a positive and delightful luxury, and an auspicious fact, after all the tag-rag and bob-tail of coarse and silly burlesquers, dancers of the can-can, diapered ballet-girls, and elaborate expositions of harlotry and adultery, which have so long kept carnival in that handsome theater. We gladly hail this incident as a token of Niblo’s stage is to be emancipated from indelicacy and bosh, and devoted hereafter to the legitimate purposes of the drama. . . .”

6)
Review: New York Clipper, 13 November 1869, 254.

“. . . Lotta’s brusque, devil-may-care style of acting, together with her medleys, banjo songs and dances, similar to the minstrel boys, and clog dancing, have been a great hit, and received from three to four encores each evening. . . . In the last act, Mr. Vincent partly redeemed himself, for in the duet with Lotta, and the dancing, he was very good and acted with considerable spirit. . . . Lotta appears the same frisky little actress of yore, playing with a perfect abandon and in a manner that charms all who see her. In the Fair Scene, which is well placed upon the stage, Lotta does a song and dance of ‘Little Nell the Belle,’ and for an encore another one called ‘Going to the Matinee,’ finishing with a clog dance. . . . In the last act, for a final encore, she gives ‘Shoo Fly’ in a spirited manner, assisted by Felix Vincent. This song was received each evening with great applause, and Lotta has had to come out three to four times. . . .”