The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1898-11-22
THE BEST
WAR PLAY
EVER WRIT
"Secret Service" Is a
Huge Success.
FINE ACTING THROUGHOUT
lew COMEDIANS AT "GAY
COMFY ISLAND"
Special Production at Morosco's
Comedy at the Alcazar-Or-
pheum Variety and
Others.

William Gillette's Secret Service"
was nIaved by the author and his COM
pany at the Baldwin last night to
crowded audience The performance
! finished at about 1880, and the crowd
was still there, including yours faith
fully, who forgot all about such trif1es
as newspapers that must go to press in
time to meet the suburban's early
breakfast. Some plays are easy to
! leave at a decent hour, even when you
leave to praise them; but Secret Serv-
ice" is not one of that sort 1t grips
YOU like vice and you and your seat
are welded until the last curtain is
down.
See Secret Service" and you will
know what it is to be thrilled by war
play; you will know how it feels to be
proud of a native playwriter; you Will
be gladder than ever that you are an
American. The not-so-late unpleas-
antness between the North and the
South has been exploited on the stage
! time and time over without revealing
really strong, sane play. Scenery, fire
cracker situations and drill sergeants
stage direction have gone to make
what excitement and picture were in
the pieces, and their virtue consisted
entirely of machine made excitement
and gaudy pictures. The stacy pomp
of war cuts but slim figure in the eX-
citement of Secret Service" War is
on, you feel it and smell it in the tense
atmosphere; there is the tramp of SOL
diers and the clatter of arms and the
wonderful noises without" (Without
which it seems no modern war drama
can EXIST. But these are but
the tokens Of the time of
action; they do not dictate the drama,
but merely label it as of the American
war variety. The figures you have met
before some in one play, some in an
| other: the Southern heroine, the North
ern officer; the Southern ingenue ana
| her youngster lover who goes out 10
| fight and comes home with INJURIES
! and the Southern officer who stirS up
all the trouble for the hero. Life is
limited, and, as l say, you have met
with other stage people OF this descrlp-
ton. But you have never seen them
! shuffied and dealt as Mr.. Gillette shuf-
| fes and deals them, and you nave
never seen them made human.
1t is true that Secret Service" has
but one Northerner among its person
ages (unless you count the Drother VINO
comes on only to be killed., ana no
villain in the strict sense or the Word;
ence lies The scheme of character IS
practically the same as in the other
war plays; even the man who is not a
real villain fills all the purposes OF one,
and the comic relief and the comic love
making take up the usual percentage
of time. The difference is in the art
that has gone into the construc-
ton of the piece and in the
humanness of the lines. There
are no false heroics, no extreme en-
phasis, no situations that lean on the
long arm of coincidence; every line,
every bit of action, every climax is
bent toward a single end. Secret
Service" is not drama of character.
1t deals in action and hardly anything
else It tells in quick, vivid strokes the
story of a spy who betrayS MS cause
rather than the girl who loves nina
story that you have known many times
in many other forms; 1t is frankly ro-
mantle in tone. idealizing what is not
necessarily ideal, and yet it is never OBJ
scene in it's trust and optimism. 1t gives
YOU the event, which occupies about
the same amount of time in the play
ing as it does in the timetable on the
programme and you furnish your own
reflections and philosophy Action and
suggestion are the WatchWordS, and the
result is that Mr.. Gillette has given the
world war melodrama whose appeal
is mental as well as physical. To say
that Secret Service" is the best of the
war plays means nothing. 1t is vim
dication of them, and it is unquestion
ably the finest specimen of playwriting
that has ever come to light in America.
The acting fits the play. 1t is quick,
sensitive and in beautiful ensemble.
Mr.. Gillette stands alone in the acting
that scenes not acting, and he does
the work of his life in the part Of the
spy hero Imagine that cool imperti-
nence and poise and invention of his in
TOO Much Johnson. transposed into a
tragic key and you have an idea of his
Captain Thorne. Miss Sara Perry is
unobtrusively sympathetic as the
heroine Miss Hope Ross wrinkles
alertly as the ingenue, and-well. the
hour is too late to catalogue the many
achievements of the company. See
Secret Service and take heart in the
American drama. The ending of the