The San Francisco call., 1898-04-26
The Farce a Good One the Star Funny, but
 Immoderate.
"Nancy Hanks" Shows Jansen and Company in a Better
 Light.
Very Gay Parisians at the Alcazar ana Sunaptuous Melodranaa at
 Morosco's.

The genial George Bowles, impre- sar1o, entrepreneur and jollier of the press-in word, the Bowles who re- gently bathed Anna Held in the news papers of San Francisco-introduce at the Baldwin last night new star in the shape of our old Tivoli friend, Ferris Hartman, and new nautical musical 1afclcal comedy of British origin called
 The Purser, and which never had been presented before in this country. MT. BoWles prepared the American pre- sentat1on with quiet legitimacy. He ex- ploded no advance torpedoes about the play and if his star has acquired the practice of bathing daily in sixty-four quarts of Dockery-proof milk, the fact has been kept out of the newspapers. Hartman and "'The Purser" were of fered simply on their merits, and, as far as the flowers and enthusiasm of the Hartmanite audience would permit, were given a fair trial. "The Purser" is worth seeing, and Hartman is just as good a comedian as he used to be In the old Tivoli days. The Pursers would not set fire to a normal dramatic season, but in the present flood of ten derloin fun it is conspicuously decent, and, in places, humorous; and with sev- eral notifications of him, which 1 shall suggest later, the star ought to be able to dispatch the obligations of the title part.
 The plot of the piece is quick and easy. Just as the purser and his bride
 were about to settle down to several months of stationary honeymoon he was ordered off to sea; and sooner than leave her behind he smuggles her aboard as a cabin passenger under her maiden name, for it is forbidden officers of the Kangaroo" to be accompanied by their wives The other woman in the case turns up in the gay young per son of a Mrs. Stanley, lately divorced at the suggestion, she says, of the purser. She is willing to be his any minute, with the whole ship as witness; promising all kinds of marriage to take place when the voyage is over. This sort of start admits of no end of complication, which the author, John T. Day, manages very neatly. The captain, the male passen- gers, and the ships doctor are soon paying their several devotions to the purser's bride, under his anguished eyes; Mrs Stanley is getting caught in the purser's stateroom repairing his underwear, under the wife's eyes; and finally the captain becomes so warm In his attentions to Mrs. Purser that her indignant spouse throws discretion to the winds and knocks him down and is ordered under arrest, whereupon both women faint in his arms. The disentanglement, like the earlier situ- ations, is done in the widely hopeful way of irresponsible farce, but with considerable fun and situational skill In fact, the situations are very clever in invention, and as the probability of hn rain i- i,1cyi ictA T not mind the careless manner in which they are led up to. The dialogue is more distinguished than that of the usual contemporary farce comedy, and the characters are, for the greater part, quite sharply drawn.
 Although the explanatory Aside and the confidential Soliloquy are a bit too prominent, "The Purser' is happy enough in point of construction to be played as straight farce without any musical embellishments and without any funny-man antics on the part of its principal comedian. The two large vital mistakes made by MT. Hartman are that he is forever coming out of the part to make mugs at the audience and that he sings at all. Perhaps in the concert" scene in the second act a single song from Hartman would not be remarkably disastrous, but the pres ent arrangement which permits him to sing about every fifteen minutes is directly against the fortunes of the pro- duction.
 l know that MT. Hartman used to sing yards and yards of all sorts of comic song at the Tivoli to an accom- pantment of enraptured boot-thunder from the crowd, but the Baldwin is SUD- posed to attract the very persons who stayed away from the Tivoli on that account. MT. Hartman's voice is never in the key and it Is of fog horn quail humorless, and the less of it is heard the bigger will be the success of the piece. With the exception of Gertie Carlisle no one in the company can sing little bit. Even the good-natured audience of last night who came with carloads of flowers and handfuls of applause, did not take very kindly to the vocal trimmings, and if MT. Hart man will scratch the most of the sing ing and quit mugging there is no req son why the piece should not do well. 1 The part of the purSer does not ask for l any notable degree of refinement and is | right in Hartman's line if he will only | reduce himself to the rest of the pict- | ure.
 Lena Merville plays Mrs. Stanley | with good spirit and a certain amount | of pat worldliness, and Alice Johnson | is sure and easy as the bride. The two | male passengers are capitally done by | John H. Brown and Edward Emory, and H. D. Blakeman will be a first rate captain when he is on better terms with the part. The only bad fig ure Is the Irish doctor of William Rich ardson. Otherwise the company is
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