HERR BANDMANN AND THE “PRESS” CRITIC.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2199, 14 March 1881, Page 3

HERR BANDMANN AND THE “PRESS” CRITIC.

The following extract from the Dunedin " Saturday Advertiser,” giving the opinion of a London critic of a high-class journal as to Herr Bandmann’s “Hamlet," will be read with interest:—

" Here Bandmann’s impersonation of Othello not having been criticised favorably by the Christchurch 1 Press,’ the * groat ’ actor sent a very amusing letter to the editor, complaining of tho injustice done to him, and abusing tho critic right and loft. Dr. Johnson once spoke of Garrick as ‘ a man who is perpetually flattered in every moda that can bo conceived ; so many bellows have blown tho fuel that one wonders he has not by this time become a cinder.’ Herr Bandmann has not yet been flattered into the cinder stage, but the indiscriminate praise that was. lavished on him in Dunedin has evidently brought him to a white heat. His letter is one of tho most wonderfully egotistic productions I have ever set eyes on. This is a specimen of the style of composition: * May I ask why—for what reason or authority—your wiseacre uses his rusty and malicious cheese knife to try and make insertions upon (sic) a well-established reputation of twenty-five years standing, backed by half tho civilised world, and such men like (sic) my late friends, Lord Lytton, John Forster, Tom Taylor, John Oxenford, Charles Dickens, the present Ralph Waldo Emerson, Longfellow, and Lord Southesk, and numbers of other eminent men.” This is a goodly array of names to bring forward, and the poor critic should certainly feel crushed, but it would be interesting to know

if any of tho eminent men mentioned admired Herr Bandmaun’s Othello, which was the part tho writer in the “Presa” found fault with. Tho late Lord Lytton, it is well known, considered Herr Bandmann a good melodramatic actor, and showed his appreciation in a decided manner by dishing up an old play that Macready had failed in, and {giving the German actor the prir cipal part. But in case the critic of the “ Press” may fancy that he alone of all men fails to admire Herr Bandmann’s Shakesperian Impersonations, I will give him tho following quotation from a notice that, appeared in the 11 Athenteam ” when “ Hamlet ” was given in London :—“ The princelinoss of Hamlet disappears and is replaced by a weak sentimentality. No touch of the irony, pathetic and savage by turns, of Hamlet is found in the actor’s performanceand in conclusion the critic remarks :—“ That the experiment is wholly a failure is due to want of judgment in certain scenes, and of expository power in all.” That Herr Bandmann is a clever and talented actor no one will deny—he has all the resources of his art at bis fingers’ ends ; but he could only bo called “ groat ” by comparison with what wo see as a rule on the colonial stage. Ido not know whether Herr Bandmann is right when he says that tho critic has “ never been out of Christchurch,” but the actor should be tho last person to complain of this. Did it never occur to Herr Bandmann that the reason he obtained such lavish praise in certain cities might arise from the fact that the critics had never had an opportunity of seeing first-class artists, and that they consequently over-estimated the value of his performances ?”