The San Francisco call., 1897-02-28

ease with wh ich a child carries
chunks OF them about shows that
they would not crush your toes if you
accidentally let one of them drop; the
Shore Acres celery and its bread are the
whltest and the kettle and the teapot the
most hospitable ever seen on any stage,
and you must understand that there is no
property nonsense about them. The
celery can only be cut few hours before
each performance, the bread is not even
bought-three for 10 cents-at a popular
bakery, it is home made; the Kettle bub-
5les with real steam, on real stove, and
the teapot-a hospitabe big brown tea
potts filed with the genuine cup that
cheers, but not inebriates.
l hesitate to say what "Shore Acres"
would De with property turkey and card
board pies, q kettle that did not boil and
tea that was only make believe, but have
haunting impression that if the silver
wedding dinner was only Bermecides
feast mucn of the glory of the play would
have departed, and if the acting was in
artistic "Shore Acres" would scarcely be
a play at all, or at least it would be one of
the baldest, most insufferably tame plays
that an audience was ever called upon 10
endure. Do not for a moment imagine
though that it is anything of the sort at
the Baldwin Theater. The acting is so
finished and the staging is SO ruI
that Shore Acres" is invested with a
homely realism that gives theater- eoers
the illusion that they are gazing into the
actual lives OF the SIM pie farming people
who make the play
Simple and delightful as ashore Acres"
is, 1t would be too much to predict that
the play will create furore her that it
is said to have aronsed in the East On the
other side of the Rockies people take their
pleasures sadly, and the neutral tints of
"Shore Acres" would no doubt appeal
more strongly to them than TO Califor-
mans who prefer to take their pleasures
sparkling, like their climate and their
champagne. In San Francisco, peo-
pie care more about teing amused
or moved than they do about weigh
ing a performance from a high-art
standpoint. "Shore Acres" is more ar
tisiic than ''The o Homes tead," but
it is not so gay. Uncle Nat of "Shore
Acres" is true TO himself and to his
simple, honest nature from one end of
the play to the other. The delightful old
farmer of The Old Homestead" falls
from grace, artistically speaking, IN those
two acts where he goes to New York 10
seek his long-lost son. In some OF the
''turns'-I can call them nothing else
outside Grace Church he just escapes
making buffoon OF himself. His exag-
gerated country cousin exploits are not
altogether artistic. but they are amusing,
and box-o office receipts have shown that
they are profitable.
"Shore Acres" is written in a graver
key. and Herne has been too artistic to
drag chunks of comedy, and 'iurns" into
workaday life. The only comedy in the
whole play lies in the little details OF do
mestIc life that would never be noticed at
home and in the quaint human weak
nesses of some of the characteristic
Mats little ioibles in the way
of believing he can cook turkey
and cranberry sauce better than the
women folks; the artful devices of
the grass widower to get ''hand-out" of
the turkey when it is cooked, the stern,
unberding orthodoxy of the 12-year-old
theologian and the abject way in which
the revengeful father willis when little
helpless grandchild is put into his arms
in his sort of comedy the laughter lies
near 10 tears. II is true to nature. but it