The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 10, 1898, Page 35

THR SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 1898. 85 noooaaagnnnunucuuuunfinuuuuuaaau;‘aaanuunnnnunnunufiauung o o ¥ b3 5 AN APPRECIATION 5 o f=s ey pa3 2 OF THE MELODRAMA AND THE ACTING 2 ) y @ AT MOROSCO’S. & o = G o O o o By ASHTON STEVENS. g <] CUCLURUCDTOT RNUAUUOGOOV OOV N VD VUGV OOV RONUUDT he t I crossed the equator | the occasfon of Mr. Mainhall's first ap- | has just startled the world which he is to Morosco's and saw every one of the | pearance at Morosco’'s (and my last r)er;:vetuallyl ‘s):armng \\'ithhths‘:“ an- > e e 8C s of “Hands |t is > od to me to be just|Douncemens at next month will see A 5 l~ \‘."]'k T l":’prx-se,::‘;y | 1‘;\15 ::::1) fl:‘: -H‘\:n;:l‘:i&':' e T al:n Jsl::u lg“",“s{j“"’ his collectad plays, those that melodrama by Pittit and | his frank admirer. His personality S not—ana | played and those that have performance of it was a Morosco's 1s a good ot too often, but just a dull night in a dull ere you find a performance acting that ¥ and memorably ngly good, al- its resonance quick and magnetic and he gets over the lines in lithe cadences. I find but one fault in Miss Hall to quibble over, | and that is apparent only when she has | not a cold and suvars her elocution to| the cloyine point. And tt are other | trusty standbys in the company. Julia | Blanc, who often does a marvelous bit | of old woman ~ortraitu ed J. But- | is in and above all you |ler, who has developed almost | Morosco’s is the one | boundless vers ty in odd character | sco that shas an |parts; d Mortimer Snow,; now that v its own, as it is boast an ab- ecial following, 11 and entirely its he has quit the monotonously hero seems much r ed in side char- acter parts, if I may judge by his ex- cellent Frenchman of this performance, | idience shares im- | in which, by the way, Lorena Atwood, | the Morosco play and |too, does a clever bit in the fragmen- ng the Morosco atmos- |tary version of the Franco-English ad- lience vary in size, | venturess. Another valuable Morosco | ht, week by week, it is |is Landers Stevens, the villain man | rance and in temper, | (whom 1 habitually slight out of a | acting and dB- | family modesty). He has, I believe, | 1 ained. Even the nt, the infinitely smaller | to laugh and flatter its | unmoved by ready- South Side record for endurance, ng just completed sixty consecu- tive weeks of steady employ ent, nine | performances to the week. His acting | sensation, is al- |is spacious and his voice wide. He has | minority and mp s to the of the house. | ‘0,.,006 ° go seriou: to Mc | they want; and unc! their om getting some- A )se a play should night and brazenly refuse Aside, the subtle Marvelous Coinci- ddition to this scorn to portion off | ing, comicality and | red old way—then what | do you think? But of | o danger and no use co never trifles with | audience. He pre- | them and they pre- | {sed, but there is a nice between them that is nt. Sur Morosco’s {8 on the —the play, the act- spire to produce bthing is done be accomplish- thing, not even ft unexplained. s the statement word, counts in wager there is sation in the av- n in the draw- Pinero. If there at all co il [° BALDWIN: s of action does not , it is In mel- y deed forecast ymmemorated in The villain would ust you wait till his is done before knowing Never! His gnarled one would tell the tale, | is not enough; in ominous ans it over to himself, or, | may even tell his victim. A sort of assistant villain in the Sea,” a French | 1t of mean morals, who breaks into ero’s hou intending no good to the hero's wife, who is alone and un- Already you have heard to get the hero away from is hour, and you know his vil purpose. So, once in the house d f: to face with the woman, does bel as the mere count of smooth every-day humanity would behave? Not on your life. He tells her all about it, too. He would tell her his whole grimy past and future as well if the hero did not return punctually several hours earlier than he had been ex- pected, deliver a few verbal knock- and finally fit the action to the yrds. There is nothing so prodigious- areful, confidential and explana- as melodrama. that he plan at t ts en all round ‘“Hands Across the is easily the best production I e ever seen at Morosco's. The ex- terior scenes, especially the one of the steamer’s deck with the moving French an-o’-war ol in the distance, are fitted to the big stage with a fine sense i the acting is remarkably | A good scene or two week occurrence at ED. HARRIGAN AT THE LFORNIA of space, forceful a is quite the mannerisms of the viilain business | down to a science, smoking cigarettes, an ¢ Morosco’s, but tu e the acting digging in his trousers pockets, toying .ffort. The cast With his gloves and wearing a top hat At lontior h faultless malevolence. The only re important and | improvement I should suggest is that instance without dis- | he try to read his big speeches with . management, which | the same easy emphasis he gives to the forgiven because of the |little ones and that he learn to shoot ing change of bill from week to | NiS Cuffs. Who ever heard of a really e e in. | 8well villain that didn’t shoot his cuffs? | . was much more prompt and in- Ao, » than usual, and even the or- | As STEVENS. | that supplied the discriptive | ‘as moderately subdued and | v in tun | r it was a performance full and rich: withUzosn md|}’lays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, by Bernard Shaw. THE OUTER WORLD.| atic radition. Mr. Mainhall Hall suffered colds that kept nd the heroine from their but their acting was large, and !ncessant, and never 1 by the obvlous personal pose. seemed to work for the play. On liant, if the most erratic of all the liv- ing dramatic critics, and the author of the Man” and “The Devil's Disciple,” | not—and it would not be at all unlike the wild Irishman of the Saturday Re- view to give an inkling in the preface of the book as to just why Henry Irv- ing ard a few other celebrated actor- managers did not produce Shaw plays as per agreement with the au- thor. The publication will be in two volumes and entitled “Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant,” and every one who is interested in the critical work of this remarkable man will be anxious or the taste of _ his quality | as a dramatist. If Mr. Shaw always to be belleved, he is, by his own confession, a better and saner playwriter than William Shakespeare, and a close second to Henrik Ibsen. He now for the first time publishes his plays, not as the last resort of a dis- appointed dramatist—the success of history of the sixteenth century! It Is' for want of this process of elabora- tion that Shakespeare—unsurpassed as poet, story-teller, character draughts. man, humorist and rhetorician—has left us no intellectually coherent drama, and could not pursue a genuinely scien- tific method in his studies of character and society.” In place of the familiar directions and scenic specifications the “Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant” of Bernard Shaw will be annotated with finished descriptions, vivid character sketches, psychologic notes and sallies of a characteristic mordant type. The first volume will consist of those plays which the author is pleased to term “unpleasant”’—the unpleasantness ly- ing in the fact that they convict the capitalist phase of modern social or- ganization, and are written from the point of view of a socialist who regards the basis of middle class society as thoroughly rotten, economically and morally. Under this heading come “Widowers’ Houses,” *“The Philan- derer” and “Mrs. Warren's Profes- sion.” The root idea of the first named is the rich suburban villa standing on the rents of the foul rook- ery; of the second, a four-act topical comedy, the fashionable cults of Ihsen- ism and “New Womanism” on a basis of clandestine sensuality—the Inde pendent Theater refused to produce it on account of its “immorality!” while, |in the third, Mrs. Walren taxes society with her occupation, which is that of a procuress. Yolume II—“Pleasant Plays"—will comprise “Arms and the Man,” the sparkling comedy in three acts, of youthful romance and . disillusion, HELENE MORA o %0 A “The Devil's Disciple” would refute that—but because he believes that in the present policy of theatrical man- agement the only chance an author has is to place his works in the hands of | the reading public. And so we shall soon know as much about Shaw as we do about Ibsen. But, unlike the Scandinavian, Shaw has very decided views as to the fu- tility of offering readers a mere repro- duction of the “prompt copies” pr pared for stage use. which the f, tor the sort of person he wished him such dramatic satires as “Arms and | to incarnate—what a light they would “The dramatic | | author must,” he contends in one of his | printed. prefaces, “fall back on his powers of | literary expression, as other poets and | fictionists do. What would we not give'| { for the copy of Hamlet used by Shake- | | speare at rehearsal, with the original |above the tune of the twittering press | ‘business’ scrawled by the promptgr's | pencil? And if we had, in addition, | | the descriptive directions George Bernard Shaw, the most bril- | author gave on the stage—above all, | the character sketches, however brie by which he tried to convey to the ac- AT THE ) Wik which was the despair of the critics on its production in London and New York; ‘“The Man of Destiny,” a one-act comedy, in which Sir Henry Irving had intended to appear as the youthful D poleon; “You Never Can Tell,” a four- act modern comedy concerned with the adventures of parkling pair of twins, land *“Candida,” a frankly sentimental play, which Mr. Shaw hopes to find un- derstanded of women, if not of men. For some reason or other his latest and most successful play, “The Devil's Disciple,” will not be among the plays The books will be published HRere by Stone & Co. of New York, and | in London by Grant Richards. Even the glorious Melba is not |agent. This came neatly typewritten: Long before Melba had any thought of a public career the fame of her beautiful voice had become known, and she was | in frequent request to sing at charity concerts, in Melbourne, much to the dis- pleasure of her parents, strict Scotch Presbyterians, who were greatly opposed to her appearance in public. After shed, not only on the play, but on the \ awhile it occurred to her that it wnuldl be a good idea to give a concert on her 'wn account, at which she might expect the vatronage of those whom she h: so frequently served. AccordMgly she ‘ngaged a hall, made all her arrange- ments, and started out to sell the tick- ‘ts. Her father, however, recognizing with joy his opportunity to cure her of her inclination to sing in public, set about t0 secure a disastrous result for the con- cert by previously calling on her friends and pledging them, as a favor to him, to decline to buy. The result was that when the eventful evening came Melba found herself confronted by a select but diminutive audience of two. Nothing daunted, she gave the entire concert ac- cording to programme; and, later, when bills for hall rent and advertising were presented, suspecting the trick he had served her, sent her creditors to her father, who, by that time, convinced that his brilllant scheme had failed of its hoped-for result, and with a secret admi- ration of his daughter’'s pluck, paid them willingly. It cannot be doubted that her splendid career has long since removed his early objection, which, had it been successful, would have deprived the world of song of its most shining light. loses all the other personages, and nothing through the deception in which he had unwittingly participated. The locale of the pilece gives opportunity for handsome settings and the glitter and glamour of the French ball Is re- produced, it is sald, with striking ef- fect. The play is full of new music by Richard Stahl and A. B. Sloane. At the head of the company comea Anna Boyd, of known quality, and Joe Coyne, new to us, but with a reputa- tion in the East. Others in the cast are: Charles Dungan, John Dudley, ‘W. H. Hatter, Harry Rodgers, Steve Maley, Sam Marion, John Mitchell, Willia Martin, Ed Wonn, Willie Mar- tin, Thomas Quinn, Minnie McEvoy, Minnie Bridges, Camille Cleveland, Liz- zie McCoy, Nellie McCoy and Amy Muller. The attraction to follow “A Stranger in New York” at the Baldwin is “The Purser,” which Ferris Hartman will bring out. Baldwin. The latest Hoyt farce, “A Stranger in New York,” is announced for produc- tion at the Baldwin to-morrow night. The farce is given the credit of being an unusually bright one, with action swift and tireless, and not a moment | of weariness between the first and final | curtains. | The story is rather more complicated | than most of those in which Mr. Hoyt | has dealt, and tells of an old chap from | | Chicago, with a letter of introduction to a New York man about town. He | | arrives in the metropolis with the in- California. Edward Harrigan will present at the California to-night “Old Lavender,” the most popular and surely the most earnest of all his many plays. see how the play and player have worn, and to the younger generation the per- formance should be uniquely entertain- ing. Mr. Harrigan is one of the pio- day enjoyed an almost unrivaled vogue. The character of Old Lavender is full of quiet pathos and observation, and is remembered here as his master- piece, both in authorship and acting. It is hardly to be expected that the present company will come up. with our recollections of the original one, but it is said that Mr. Harrigan has rebanded his players with considerable tact and aoo°°o°° BoB & MITCHELL AND BRANSON| P BRAL HARRY MAINHAL A . MO Rgbcob tention of attending the French ball in Madison-square Garden. He loses his letter, which is picked up and de- livered by a stranger who has no desire to deceive, but who is welcomed with such cordiality as would have been shown to the real person for whom the communication was written, | that he has no chance to withdraw, and finds himself all at once in the cen- ter of a brisk whirl of gayety. preserved all the traditions of the parts. Dave Braham will play Dick, the Rat the role made famous by the late Tony Hart, and all the original Braham songs w Mr. Herne begins the second and last week of *‘Shore Acres” at the Colum- | bia to-morrow evening. The houses |have been The other, for whom the letter “-as|§;‘gsf,§;'i,§‘;,;,‘e';i o R eianances penned, discovers the error which has | joveq in this city. Miss Marion Cul- been made and starts in brisk but| len, who has been playing Perley dur- hopeless pursuit. : | ing the past week, will exchange roles | This portion of the action takes|yijth Miss Julie A. Herne for the clos- | place in one of the corridors of the | ing week. Miss Cullen is a protege of Hoffman House. The next chapter is | Denman Thompson and for two sea- unfolded in a room in the tower of|sons was a prominent feature in the Madison-square Garden, occupied as a \}’*etflafl EiCi‘Or'st_PrO‘ducti‘m&d It lsl Mr. studio by one of New York's charac- | Herne's intention to withdraw ~from ters. In the end the stranger finds an | ;5101 ACTeS, &t the close of the pres- | opportunity to disclose his identity, | his new work, “The Rev. Griffith Da- but he has come to be well regarded by 1 venport.” This new play will be fol- To the clder playgoers it will be Interesting to neer American dramatists, and in his uniformly large and the| lowed by “Stlas Lapham,” which Wil- liam Dean Howells is having drama- tized for Mr. Herne. A second com- pany playing “Shore Acres” is headed by Archie Boyd, and, although con- fined mostly to one-night stands, it is meeting with financial prosperity in the East and Middle West. “Nancy Hanks,” a comedy success of the present season,is announcedto fol low “Shore Acres” at the Columbia Theater on the 18th inst. At the head of the presenting company will appear | Marie Jansen. It is pot a racing play as the title may indicate; the “Nancy Hanks" re- ferred to is not a horse, but a gold mine, or rather a mine that has been “salted” by unscrupulous persons and palmed off as a rich ore-producer upon a speculative Frenchman, on whose complicated adventures the plot hinges. Alcazar. “The Strange Adventures of Miss Brown” will be the new bill at the Al- cazar, where at very popular prices it should make a successful week, as it | has been played here but once before, | and that time with Eddie Foy in the { titulary part and at the Baldwin. For | those who may have forgotten this is a sketch of the theme: A young Eng- { lish officer weds a “ward in chancery” and to rescue her from a private school in which she is confined, disguises him- self as a young woman. In the school he has no end of comic adventure. There is a strong bit of subsidiary charaeter in a German music teacher who is in love with the school girl. Tivoli. The Tivoli's new piece, “Sinbad the | Sailor,” which was produced last night, is reviewed in another part of this paper. = Morosco's. The prologue of ‘“Pavements of Paris,” which will be the next attrac- tion at Morosco's, opens with a scene in the province of Lorraine, at the foot of the Alps, during the period of the Franco-Prussian war. The wife of Jean Le Franc is the missing heiress to the titles and estates of a noble family. Their union has been blessed with a daughter, Little Marie, about whosa subsequent adventures much of the in- terest of the plot centers. The closing scene of the prologue, in which occur the murder of General Peronne, the supposed death of Jean, and the abe | duction of Marie occur, has been util- | ized for the introduction of a histori- | cal war tableau. It will show the op- | posing armies confronting each other | upon !urnr_ied heights, during the heat | of the blobdy battle of Forbach. An- | other important new scene will be a re- | production of a view of the city of Paris by moonlight, fourteen years later. The moonlight flooding the stately buildings falls upon the placid waters of the Seine. The famous Pont | Neuf, or New Bridge, spans the river. | The “Tomb of the Rabbits,” a low Par- |isian groggery, where the thieves and gamins of Paris congregate for their | nightly revels, affords a meeting place | for the villain and his tool. Little Mary, now grown to comely girlhood, is a fugitive from the persecutions of a Procuress. The ¢ es the bridge, is seen by her enemies, pursued and thrown into the river. Her father, who has served through the war, and | returned to Paris to pursue the voca- tion of a hackman, hears her cries for help. He is at the foot of the bridge, filling his water bucket, and rushes to the rescue, forming the final tableau with Marie's dripping body in his arms. Mr. Mainhall’'s part is that of the Vi- compte de Flashon, a chevalier d'indus- | trie and all-around rogue, whose re- | deeming traits and droll characteris- | tics rob his unscrupulous actions of | much of their repulsiveness. La Petite | Lund has been cast for little Mary {and will introduce specialties, and the | rest of the company will be prominent« | ly represented. | Orpheum. An entire new bill is announced at the Orpheum this week, when Hyde's | comedians take the boards in place of | the present string of talent. The Hyde l‘sho\\‘ opens with to-night's perform- |ance. The Hyde combination is said | to be the strongest of all the road vau- | deville shows, and several acts have | been specially engaged for the coast | tour. At the head of the list is Helene | Mora, the famous female barytone, who | will appear in descriptive songs and {ballads. She will introduce one written | specially for her, entitled “For Old | Glory,” which will be produced with | scenic effects. McIntyre and Heath, the black face comedians, have an amusing skit, entitled “Two Georgia Minstrels,” in which the experiences and hardships of the stranded actor are presented. An entirely different line of black face work is that by Wil- liams and Walker, colored boys, who will present the idiosyncrasies of the flash coon and his sweetheart. This team scored the phenomenal run of | thirty-two weeks at Koster & Bial's. | In their act they will introduce ‘‘Lord | Barnie,” the famed black mascot of the | Chicago baseball game; they are as- sisted in the cake-walk by two creole girls. Charles R. Sweet, known as the piano tramp, will appear in specialties, and Thorne and Carlton will present a skit entitled ‘“The Substitute Husband.” | The great Lafayette, who has attained fame as an imitator of John Philip Sousa, will appear in a turn of fantas- tic mimicry. Among other features of | the bill is Ajax, known as the flexible | marble. | The animals, their intrepid trainers, | Chiquita and several new people in the | free theater will make the Chutes an attractive place this week. | Olympia. Mandola, the clever equilibrist, who | has been the especial hit at the Or- pheum this week, will be one of several new turns at the Olympia. Music. At Thursday’s symphony concert in the Tivoli Mr. Scheel’s orchestra will | play Schubert’s C major symphony, the Parislan Bacchanale from ‘Tann- hauser” and a symphonic poem by Ur- ban, entitled “The Ratcatcher.” The first of a series of concerts to be given here by the world famous Knei- sel quartet will take place at Sherman & Clay Hall on the evening of May 16.