On the 3d of August, 1857, the Marshes played _Black-eyed Susan_ at Laura
Keene's Theatre here, followed by _The Toodles_. From the bill of this,
their opening night, the following casts are copied:
BLACK-EYED SUSAN.
William Miss Louisa Marsh.
Gnatbrain Master George H. Marsh.
Tom Bowling Master Alfred (Stewart).
Admiral Master Waldo (Todd).
Dolly Mayflower Miss Carrie (Todd).
Black-eyed Susan Miss Mary Marsh.
TOODLES.
Timothy Toodles Master George H. Marsh.
George Acorn Miss Louisa Marsh.
Tabitha Toodles Miss Mary Marsh.
This was probably the last season of the Marsh Juveniles in New York, and
since their exit no startling troupe of Phenomena have appeared here. The
Boone and the Holman Children were clever, but not so successful as the
Marshes. The Worrell Sisters were popular, but, although young girls, they
were in their teens, and scarcely came under the head of infant players.
They made their New York _debut_ at Wood's Theatre, 514 Broadway,
afterwards the Theatre Comique, under the management of George Wood, in a
burletta called _The Elves_, April 30, 1866, Miss Sophie Worrell, the
eldest of the three sisters, being at that time fully eighteen years of
age.
Among the occasional companies of children who have appeared in New York
were "The Mexican Juvenile Troupe." They occupied Mr. Daly's Fifth Avenue
Theatre during the summer season of 1875, remaining two weeks, and
appearing at the Lyceum Theatre, on Fourteenth Street, from the 1st to the
13th of November in the same year. Their performances were conducted in
the Spanish language, and their specialty was opera-bouffe. They were well
trained in voice and action, but the music in their childish treble was
weak; and, personally, the troupe ran to legs and arms and hands and feet,
and the general angular and awkward undevelopment characteristic of their
age and size. The bit of a _prima donna_ who sang La Grand Duchesse and La
Belle Helene in the titular parts, and who was known to fame as Signorina
Carmen Unda y Moron, was made up carefully after Tostee, whom, in certain
actions and gestures and expression of face, she much resembled. She
displayed all of the vim and _abandon_ and _chic_ of the veteran actress,
and tossed her head, and switched her train, and ogled and leered, and
capered like the very Tostee herself, as seen through the reverse of an
opera-glass. The child acted with spirit, or something that was like it,
and seemed to have a morbid enjoyment and comprehension of the indelicate
parts she played. The spectacle was far from being a pleasant one, and
probably shocked more persons than it amused. Little Carmen was certainly
not more than eight years old, and barely as tall as the table in her
stage parlor, while none of the company reached in height the backs of the
chairs of ordinary size with which, in strange incongruity, the stage of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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