Mrs Brown Potter (1857-1936)

"Charlotte Corday"
By Kyrle Bellew
Produced at the Adelphi, 21st January, 1898

Though more carefully presented last night than at the Grand some weeks since, the story of the murder of Marat suggests no reversal of the judgment then delivered. One expert there might be to urge nothing in censure. He would be the Vincent Crummles of Mr. Pinero's new theatrical comedietta at the Court.

There are speeches here with a vengeance for him to "dig his teeth into," and, personally, I feel sure he would be satisfied. But what is one man's meat is a people's poison. Vide the currish monster (= "See the cowardly monster" - ed), Marat, the hero of this play. Briefly, its avalanche of words overwhelms and smothers it. There is no need for a single syllable. For the play is no "drama." From the beginning Charlotte is abnormal, an abstraction. She stands for hatred personified. Opposed to her is Marat, ferocity and blood lust incarnate. All that is told were told with equal eloquence in a series of tableaux. Indeed, the pictorial effect would be in this way intensified. For Mrs. Brown-Potter, in loveliness and picturesque bearing the very "Angel of Assassination," delivers every sentence in tragic recitative, and thus each moment removes the character still farther from the confines of humanity. Mr. Bellew's squalid, husky, broken Marat remains what it was, a curiously consistent assumption.

It lacks the force that we associate with a tiger in human shape. But Mr. Bellew knows his audience, and he, and Mrs. Brown-Potter, and the ingenuous mechanism of the play keep interest on the alert among the uninitiate. A. A. B.

The Daily Mail (London) - 22nd January, 1898.