Lorlie’s Wedding

“Mrs. Methua-Scheller, who finally bade farewell to the German stage, will appear on stage tonight at one of our most fashionable and beloved theaters, the Winter Garden. She plays ‘Lorle’ in the English translation of ‘Dorf und Stadt.’ We are not worried about Mme. Methua-Scheller’s success here, since, in Boston, where she had an unknown and more difficult-to-please audience, she was quite successful.”

Cast.

“The foreign element that has prevailed so largely of late on our metropolitan boards was again manifest last evening in the debut at the Winter Garden of Madame Maria Methua-Scheller, a German lady, who has already appeared in German drama and opera, and (at Boston) in English plays, with considerable success. The piece selected for her introduction to a New York audience was an adaptation by Augustin Daly, from the German, entitled ‘Lorlie’s Wedding,’ and though a weak, inoffensive thing in itself, contains some situations well calculated to call forth the peculiar excellences of Madame Scheller, whose acting is noticeable for its quiet earnestness and great truthfulness to nature. Nothing is overdrawn, nothing exaggerated, while the slight Geman accent adds a certain piquancy to the performance, with accords well with the character represented. The lady’s voice is sympathetic and cultivated, and in the incidental songs is heard to peculiar advantage.

We cannot speak at all favorably of the ‘support’ given to the lady.” Goes on to criticize other actors.

“Winter Garden.—A new drama called ‘Lorelie’s Wedding’ was produced here last evening for the début of Mme. Methua Scheller—a lady who has already won some distinction on the German stage. The piece is derived from a novelette, which has been turned into a drama by Mad. Birch-Pheiffer, and subsequently transmuted into English—with enlargement—by Mr. Augustin Daly. It has the merits and defects of such an origin. [Criticism of play.] How, by meek suffering and a little music, the love lorn Lorlie wins [her husband] back again, is the simple story of the play—so simple that we cannot analyse [sic] it. . . . To be sure, she brings her husband back to constancy by a song; but this is an emotional accident. . . . The part of Lorlie would, in fact, be dull but for the earnestness and pretty pathos infused into it by Mme. Methua-Scheller. This lady, as we gather, was reared to the German operatic stage; relapsed to the theatrical stage; and from local causes, easy to understand, has accrued to the vernacular and the regular drama. She has a pleasant personal appearance, a light and agreeable bearing, an immense amount of naïveté and a good voice.”

“Madame Scheller plays again tonight in ‘Lorlie’s Wedding.’ Her quiet unaffected style of acting and her admirable vocalization render her performances a pleasant relief to the sensational school of histrionics so much in vogue at present.”