Atonement

     “The first impression of Mr. Gaylor’s new sensation drama of the “Atonement, or the Child Stealer,” although oppressive, and in some respects revolting, is the best.  The piece does not improve on acquaintance.  The ingredients of which it is composed are too strong.  The gorge rises at a repetition of the feast.  Child-stealing per se is an occupation with which the public is unacquainted.  To judge from advertisements in the daily papers child-selling is a much more common practice.  There are liberal parents, too, who are even willing to give away their children.  The heroine of this piece is a child-stealer, and when the curtain rises enjoys the worst of reputations in that regard.  Why she steals children is neither explained nor hinted at.  The common and sometimes inconvenient prevalence of heirs to every sort of property renders it exceedingly doubtful if the business in its most romantic aspect—namely, supplying false representatives—could succeed, and one does not wish to think that Madge stole children for the paltry sake of their clothes.  Mr. Gaylor, however, establishes the business, and we must calmly take it for granted.  Madge, then, abstracts the juvenile population for purposes of her own, and with gratifying results in a pecuniary point of view.  When the curtain rises she has already amassed a bag of gold and a bottle of gin.  She thirsts for more gold, in order that her own child—an infant of fifteen months may never know the trials and temptations of poverty.  Her husband is a sailor and at sea; the child is out at nurse.  We have barely learnt these particulars when a masked figure enters.  It is a customer who wants a child, and who is willing to pay the liberal sum of two thousand guineas for one.  Madge resolves to undertake the commission, and takes into her confidence a friend, one Richard Craddock, who promises to get the infant.  Both temporarily leave the stage, and Madge’s husband enters with a baby in his arms.  He has unexpectedly returned home, and as a double surprise to his wife has called for the child.  He places it in a cradle, and goes out with some companions for refreshment.  Madge returns, and waits anxiously for Craddock.  Noticing a strange breathing, she discovers the infant in the cradle, and concludes that Craddock has placed it there during her absence.  The stranger now returns, receives the child, and pays the two thousand guineas.  The denouement can be imagined.  The honest Jack returns, busses his wife, speaks of his child, and Madge learns that she has sold her own flesh and blood.  This is not the worst of it.  Craddock is arrested, informs against the wretched woman, who is seized by the Police as the curtain falls.  All this takes place in the prologue.  An interval of fifteen years occurs between this and the first act, passed by Madge in a penal colony, whither she had been sent for child-stealing.  She returns to seek her child, and accident throws the young lady—who has grown vigorously into maturity—in her way.  How she tries to recover her, and is foiled, time after time, is the story told by the dramatist.  It will suffice to say that the two-thousand-guinea infant was adopted by Lord Lansdale, an ill-favored and overbearing nobleman whose own child has died, and who needs a substitute in order to prevent the property which he has acquired from passing into other hands.  Craddock, who accidentally discovers this fact, turns it to good account; tries to marry the young lady, and is prevented by Madge, who avows her maternity.  Craddock in the end murders Madge, and the last we see of that unfortunate woman shows her with a sickening gash in her neck and her hands dabbled in blood.  The material is sensational enough, and Mr. Gaylor has used it with his usual skill.  The defect of the piece lies in the character of the heroine.  She cannot excite the sympathy of the audience, simply because she is a child-stealer; and when her own child is lost to her the matronly portion of the audience simply feels that it serves her right.  Miss Lucille Western renders justice to the part.  There is a drunken scene, however, which might be somewhat shortened—if not omitted altogether, and we say this with the fullest recognition of the singular power displayed by the lady in it.  There are vices which should never be exhibited on the stage, and drunkenness is one of them.  Mr. Barton Hill as Craddock was admirable.  He is a sterling artist, and lends importance to any company.  Mr. M. W. Leffingwell, a thoroughly good actor, genial and undemonstrative, made his first appearance as Simon Niphem.  Messrs. R. W. Keene and T. Owens also had parts which introduced them to the patrons of Mr. Wood’s theatre.  They were not strikingly efficient, but the presence of so many new names shows that Mr. Wood has awakened to the fact that the worst artists are not always the cheapest.  The drama was successful, and will undoubtedly enjoy a run.  It is questionable, however, if it ever takes its place as a leading feature of Miss Western’s repertoire, scanty though it be.  Before leaving the subject we desire to direct Mr. Gaylor’s attention to a local error.  Madge is described as No. 3 London Bridge, meaning that her resting place is beneath the third arch of that structure.  It has been the last resting place of many unfortunates, but it has never been used for the purposes indicated by Mr. Gaylor.  About twenty feet of water prevails there at all times.  It should be Waterloo Bridge, the approaches to which are over dry arches.”

     “It is one of the lowest classes of Bowery pieces, and we should think the last one an actress who has been so successful in ‘East Lynne,’ and such style of pieces which appeal to the better feelings of nature, should have placed in her repertoire.  It is highly sensational, it is true, and true that sensation pieces pay better now-a-days than Shakespeare, but there is no excuse for the production of a play that is of such a low-life order, having for its principal characters thieves, convicts and other representatives of doubtful character.  All such plays have a proper sphere, and that is at the Old Bowery, where its frequenters look for that style, but in a first class Broadway theatre, where the audience look for the higher flights of the legitimate dramatic muse, it is out of place. . . . It has attracted crowded houses all the week, and at the matinee, on the 21st, there was a large attendance of ladies.”