3-065-572 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Christmas Pantomimes: scene from "Jack in the Box" at Drury-Lane Theatre, 1874. London stage production. 'The skill of Mr. E. L. Blanchard in the composition of pantomimes has been so fully recognised, and his facility of execution so much enhanced by practice for...a quarter of a century, that the first place is due to him in his capacity of author, as well as to the theatre with which he has been so long identified. We are glad...to be able to recognise the merits of Mr. F. Evans, who sustains the part of Jack-in-the-Box, and whose exit from the chest is represented in our Illustration. His spring into the air from the trap bespeaks the skilful acrobat, and his demeanour afterwards abounds in sportive suggestion. Humorous gesture and movement are multiplied and increased, until "children of a larger growth" roar as vociferously as the tinier infants to whom laughter is as natural as it is sudden...The attitudes of Mr. Brittain Wright and Miss Harriet Coveney, as Cockalorum the Great, King of Cockaigne, and Prince Felix, are suggestive of the wonder provoked by the startling apparition with which they are so unexpectedly greeted...Mr. Chatterton has most sedulously provided for his public a decidedly good Christmas entertainment'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.