The San Francisco call., 1898-01-25
NAUGHTY GIRL
 FROM PARIS Lingerie and a Dutch man Are the SenSa- tiOns of the Piece.
Harry Hernsen's Innkeeper Practically Saves the
 Production.
The Human Lizard wriggles Good Turn at the OrPheum-The
 Other Theaters.

A funny and different Dutchman and a wholesale exposure of ladies' un- derwear were the conspicuous sensa- tions of "The Girl From Paris" at the Baldwin last night. The piece itself is a musical vaudeville farce in two acts, the first of which is elaborately dull, the second fairly funny
 The plot deals in an English husband, who becomes entangled in the graces of a giddy girl from Paree; she takes his ardent promises to the courts and is granted a verdict of s1O,0OO worth of consolation. whereupon he files home and damages, disguises himself as a kilted Scot, takes up his abode at an inn in Schoppenburgen and has it given out in the newspapers that he is dead. To the inn come his wife, his friend, the French girl and everybody else. The friend and the wife become dangerously affectionate, and he, in a rage, gives away his identity and an- swers the reproaches of his wife with few gentle remarks of his own.
 The music is auxiliary, the situations number precisely one, the plot itself as l have suggested, does not matter much. Personal ginger of the com pany and fleet stage management are responsible for all the fun that passes the footlights. The first act is so ar ranged that nothing happens in it. It might be less tame with a more spirit ed young woman in the title part than Miss Mamie Gilroy; but in last night s performance it was merely a postpone- ment of the fun in the second act; for that fun, being mainly of a vaudeville nature, hardly needed an hour or more of preparation" However, not even to point the dullness of the first act will I say that the second was wholly galvanic Harry Hermsen's German innkeeper could not be the center of the scene all of the time, and there is limit to the excitement to be got from the raw point-blank flour ish of feminine under garments and I think this limit was about reached in the first act The second act was valuable so long as Mr. Herrn- sen was the dominant figure of It. He has made a study of a Dutchman that is copiously unlike anything we have seen here before; may be 1t is an irni- tation of Louis Mann (who created the part) and may be 1t Is MT. Hermsen's s own-I cannot say. There is no sane reason, though. why there should not be a little versatility in the Dutch comedy business, and no one will withhold praise from MT. Hermsen merely be- cause he is so unfortunate as to have had a talented predecessor. His part and his playing or 1t saved the show last night.
 The house was crowded to the walls with good people ready to have a good holiday time, and more than the usual first night reserve was expressed in that bodeful silence which greeted the close of the first act. MT. Hermsen does not appear until the second. He is the keeper of an inn and the in- ventor of a mineral spring Evidently he has diagnosed the smell and sub stance of mineral waters. He manu- factures his by mixing salt old horse shoes and a delinquent egg in a tank i of last years water. Out of and around this tank is the potency of the the play.
 The cast is a long one. and includes many women, most of whom, from the | leading lady to the lowly slavey, make | a wild and obvious exhibition of that bifurcated garment, which. if shown or | the stage at all, should be shown coyly and without effort. Miss Carrie Behr l is the slavey, a somewhat dull one, I thought, until she sang Mary Jones' | Top Note" with a good touch of com 1 icality; but even then 1t had not real | character Miss Gilroy seems to be | badly out of it in the prominence of her part. She lacks enterprise and insin-