Mounet-Sully, the doyen of the: Cométie Frangaixe, has blossomed somewhat late in life, as a dramtation of seeing his own creation on the stage. In collaboration with M. Pierre Barbier, he has written i throo-act play in verse, "La Vieillesee de Don Juan," produced to-night at the Odeon. Only once before, in modern timos, lias an actor attached to the French theatre boon allowed to appear onthe stage of the second. The precedent was croated many yours ago for Got, whose services were obtained for new play by his friend Emile Angier. To night's production consequently had sonal interest. It 10 another respect, namely, 'a8 an illustration of the homely aphorism that the cobbler shoul stick to his last.
tragedian, M. Mounet-Sully has fow equals; as 8 playwright, judging by is first essay, ho has w great many iperiors. One wonders how a cuitivated intellect with a strony sense of dramatic effect could manage to produce so undramatic a play. It suggests that actor and spectator regard 8 play from entirely different points of "La Vieilles de Don Juan, written as it is in harmonious and often eloquent verse, would probably read very well in the seclusion of the study; but, on the stage, it seems cadly lacking in action. Thre is but one halipenuy worth of doing to an intolerable deal of declaim-Moreover, M. Mounet-Sully's conception of his hero leaves a great deal of room for criticism. Even though he make s picturesque figure in hi Louis XII costume and flowing locks, middle-aged cavalier who clings d peratoly to his fast-vanishing roaturity and deplores his own fatal fascination strikes one, this in matter-of-fact a; as slightly 's archaic, not to ssy rid culeus. The character, as M. Mounet-Sully conceives it, has no real digni As for the play, it can be described very briefly. Don Juan, while recovering from a sword-thrust, is the house of his cousin Don Jose. The Intter's daughter, though promised to a youth of her own age, falls in love with the irresistible one, and proposes to him, mock to his discomfiture. To get out of the difficulty, he takes poison and dies, although: perience of the sex must hi that, if he had simply dameel_woald soon have oon self with her young lover. Don Jose and his wife, who are models of domesity, act as foils to Don Juan and as authors' theory that pleasure instead of happiness, never knew what love was, In the place of Leporello we have xn elderly man-inkes his head old retainer,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.