The San Francisco call., 1898-01-16

 6 WILLIE GOLFERS g MAN FROM MEXICO, 5 AND OTHER PERSONS. 2 Dv ,ouro,, o--,n,n 6 0' A0H'oN STEVENS
 


The man who will not laugh at Will lie Collier in The Man from Mexico" has no soul l admit there is some thing to think about in the fact that our one serious playhouse has been for weeks, and will be for weeks more, giv- en over to the pleasures of the ha-ha; 1ut if anything will reconcile the crav- Ing playgoer to this siege of farce it is a good farce and a good farce actor such as we have now at the Baldwin. put my admiration of The Man from Mexico to the test-I went to see him twice within the week; and the second time, as the first, I laughed myself 'al- most into tears. There are some comic shows that drive the critics to kind words He laughs. realizing that he who laughs leaves criticism behind, and then he sits him down at his desk and apologizes for having had a good time says he hasn't much idea what it was all about, but it was certainly quick and funny, and he and everybody else laughed, and if you have any taste for this sort of entertainment and are not too exacting, 1t will divert you, too, maybe.
 The beauty of Willie Collier and this farce is that a man may enjoy them llll nG 6CneS, DuliQ pdtSSyIlCS COluInnS high to their comic charms, and still preserve unsoiled conscience and un- humbled pride.
 would not belittle the importance of Farce. which is one of the immor- tai parts of the theater but nowadays most which passes for that is entirely something less. "The Man from Mex iPn '' I ChNIilH iS f not elevate it's class, as Oscar Wilde's elegant congregations do; nor devote itself as industriously to a deliberate scheme of action as do some of the pieces that are made in France. It is a very difficult piece to place. You might say its scheme is more conversational than situationaL because the actual in cfdent is limited, and the most of the time taken up with vagrom dialogue. There are to be reCkOned with, on the other hand, those verbal situations which are the direct outcome of the seemingly irresponsive dialogue, and which play such an important part in the comic interest. It is difficult even te place the authorship of the piece. I have the word of several playgoers that the basis of the plot has long since served in French and in English farces. and an honest man, who knows, tells me that the ludicrous climax of the prison scene is not written by Du SOuChet at all, but is solely the inven- Lion of Collier. I said last week that 1t would be hard matter to determine where Du Souchet's work ends and Golfers begins. Still, I cannot see MT Collier to the point where he even ef- faces Du Souchet's name from the pro- gramme.
 However, the parentage of "The Man from Mexico" is not a vital question It is the piece in performance that we are applauding, and MT. Collier attends ito it that he is all of that, and the World is gayer because of him. I doubt If there. is any one, even among his associate actors, who grudges him single line, or single moment of the center of the stage. The part of Ben Jantn Fitzhugh is so written that he must be the play. There is no alter native-it is Collier or nothing. The star is not unconscious of his central iZation, and, moreover, he knows how to get the fullest value from his back ground. His scheme of acting his own part is the best and the only one feasi- ble to this farce. He is seemingly un- aware of his audience and his own com- icality, or as near it as man can be- while throwing off gags and puns and catch lines at the rate of a dozen to the minute. In more legitimate farce where there are no gag lines, an actor, to be funny, has only to present a se- rious ccuntenance to the circum- stances which overwhelm him; but the backbone of this piece is verbal play and touch too much Of unconscious ness would suggest a comedian in a trance. What MT Collier does is to give to the part as much legitimacy as 1t will stand for, and not a bit more He is deliberately quiet and repressed; he presents Gin the first act) the ap- peaTance of respectable, red headed, suburban person, with an arch taste in clothes: he has an anxious, worried look accented by spectacles-and out of this modest picture and gentle demean- or whirls a perpetual cyclone of Amer ican gags. The incongruousness of 1t points the fun. And then he makes a tremendous effect of the contrast be- tween himself and the rest of the com- pany. He Is all earnestness and repose; They play in the loud, hustling key of conventional farce comedy. He never goes into the painful details of any
  joke, or anything else; he relies on the subtleness of suggestion; he is perfect in the business of the part. By a sim gle glance at the revolver, the where abouts of which we have forgotten early in the act, he gives the suspense to, makes inevitable, that conVusing cli- max of the prison scene. Willie Collier is a wonderful little farce-actor. I hope nothing will ever turn his head or in- duce him to become a comedian.
 MT. Collier has done so much for the second act I wonder that he doesn't do something for the finale of the first, which is now the one limp situation in the piece.
 NEW TO-DAY-AMUSEM