The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-07-07
drink cool things and try to think about


drink cool things and try to think about
something else.
Every now and again L go to the Tivoi,
and for awhile l went there because I
liked to hear Miss Willard sing. | still
have that sensation enthusiastically, but
the Tivoli is hard master and soft,
sweet voice sometimes meets there the fate
of La bedide Honorine, the leedle Cheru-
salem skylark, and gets all the music
strangled out of it. Miss Willard, too, has
buried beneath the regulation, brass band
Tivoli manner that suggestion of modesty
which was so pleasing on her first appear
ance, and with large pink silk legs flashing
through a fringe of blue satin ribbons, the
degagee Tivoh bearing and a tired strain
running through her head tones, she is
booming along toward the commonplace at
a very pretty pace. The "Tar and the Tar
tar is said to be the highest point of ex-
cellence to which the present Tivoli COM
pany attains. With Leary in the cast in
place of the person whose name I have
forgotten, it was, as [ remem Der it, inf
nitely better than during the present run,
but it is a bright gay little affair un der
u
two of the troupe in more favorable light
than that which shines on Miss Willard.
Miss Plaisted, for example, seems
somewhat conquered by her Turk
ish trousers and, for the nonce,
assumes subdued and almost
plaintive air which accompanies her even
through her evolution into boomers. |
am sim pressed with the superior grace of
Miss Plaisted when she is plaintive Not
ha III =
under the hypnotic influence of Svengali
Hartman. This is the only opportunity I
have had of looking at Miss Plaisted when
she was standing still. She was singing
the sweet old air, which even Du Maurier
has not been able TO stale and wither, with
feeling and with art. The calcium light
thrown full upon her was flattering to a
frocks of which Miss Plaisted does not
weary. There were none of the disfgur-
ing winks and knowing mods and strange
grimacings and twitchings of the lips and
hard, stiff, little filings of hard, stiff little
legs and arms and roughety tough man.
nerisms which Miss Plaisted so grievously
mistakes for opera bouffe vivacity, but just
for one feeting minute, quaint, pictur-
esque, sweet-singing small person who
might be charming an she chose.
| have a burning thought which must
have vent. l am weary of the gifted
Hartman. An actor who can do one thing
so cleverly over and over again ought to
be clever enough to do something else
occasionally. l used to laugh when
Mr.. Hartman said, 'Oh, sayp and smiled
loosely on the world and wobbled up
the stage and down and then up again
(but always in the center) and fell
over himself and all that sort OF thing.
Further details are super1uous and, for
the matter of that, any-since every man,
woman and child in San Francisco has
seen Mr. Hartman doing these things over
and over again. The point is that once 1
laughed and now laugh no more. Neither
at these things nor at that bounding, india
rubber dance which has not varied by the
tripping of toe since l came here from
New York some three or four years agone
and bound myself to the statement, in
print, that Hartman was the cleverest
low comedian in the country. ] am glad
I expressed it that way. There is comfort
in this. | may still say truthfully that
think Mr.. Hartman would be funny-in
the country.
There is a sort of magic lantern shadow
picture going on at the Orpheum, which is