The San Francisco call., 1913-08-26
CALIFORNIA STORY
RECONC|LES YOU
To PLAYH0UsEs
Neither Catechism Nor Even
Play, 1t Takes Audience
Into Lap and Lulls One
Into Belief
BY WALTER ANTHONY

ment OF the theater. 1t reconciles you
to the playhouse, even If you are a
hired playgoer. It is as remote from
problem play as Walt Whitman is dis
tant from Walter Pater, and there is
no suggestion from the beginning to
the end of the drama at the Columbia
of Ibsen or Brieux or Alice Smith You
drop your troubles when you enter the
portals OF the Columbia and you pick
up the thread of the gayly garnished
history by John Stephen McGroarty.
You are also thankful that The Mis-
sion Play, was brought to our doors
from far off San Gabriel. where for two
years it has been accomplishing more
things in art than our critical phil
osophy can explain.
In the first place, THE Mission Play
is not play; neither is it pageant,
and neither is 1t a slice of the cate
chism. 1t is history staged. 1t tells
us the story of our own California and
shows us the pictures. too. 1t takes
a recondite audience into its lap, so to
say, and lulls it into belief; it charms
the sophisticated and makes him one
of the faithful.
Staged in a house owned by lineal
descendants of Abraham and played by
actors of all races, including Indians
it would commend itself to .Moham-
of a Christian scientist. No racial nor
religious prejudice could be too stub
born for The Mission Play to dis
solye into the tears of sympathy.
DISCOUNTED AS A PLAY
And yet 1t is very disjointed as a
play. History plays such pranks with
romance that, as the Wandering Jew
transcends time limits, so does the hero
of McGroarty'S play outlast a genera
al -I hor in he SirGf rf
appears in the last as an aged half
breed
Meantime an episode drama has in
troduced a dozen schemes for play.
any one of which in hands less fertile
of plots than McGroarty's would have
been sufficient for a three hour drama.
Perhaps I haven't given you a, very
accurate account of Mr.. McGroarty's
drama, The Mission Play" If so, the
fault is not so much mine as his.
He doesn't give very accurate ac
count of his own play. 1t begins in 1853,
on the shores of San Diego bay, and
ends in 1S47 at the ruined mission of
San Juan Capistrano. Meanwhile the
mission of San Carlos, near Monterey.
in 1874 has been revealed, and the
epochs of California history have been
exploited UP 10 the time when gold was
about to hasten history in the west.
UNIVERSAL APPEAL
Indians, Spaniards. wanderers from
Mexico. adventurers. gay cavaliers and
senoritas in garish dresses. wander
about, while friars of st. Francis seek
TO save the souls of those who owned
this country before our fathers found
it.
Much of the spirit of self-abnegation,
self-sacrifice and n1artyrdon, that char
acterized the founders of the California
missions. is embodied in the play It
was clearly. in this respect labor
of love with Mr.. McGroarty, whose
sincerity shines clear in his most
rhetorical lines and whose purpose is
none the less apparent because his
play is. as it happens, of quite universal
appeal.
George Osbourne plays the role of
Father Junipero Sierra, founder of the
missions in California. 1t is not we'll
to say that Mr.. Osbourne played" the
part. He did not seem to approach II
from the usual acute angle of the actor.
He seemed rather to live 1t, and / am
inclined to believe that as he played it
the word can not be escaped-he felt
it was the crowning achievement of a
life upon the stage.
OSBOURNE'S WORK SUPERB
There was devotion. sympathy, feel
ing, and, better STILL belief in the por-
trayaL He brought to life the spirit
: Of great man and visualized it on the
stage with a touch of respect quite
impossible to describe but at once
ond act scene. when the spirit of the
play takes him perilously close to the
nelodra mates of Richelieu in the Lord
Lytton drama, Osbourne Launched the
curse of Rome" without suggestion of
plagiarism. and discounted the wretch
who would. but didn't, steal the pretty
Anita from the arms of her Indian
sweetheart
In the treacherous scene, which I
really think Mr.. McGroarty would have
written better had not Bulwer Lytton
penned it first. Osbourne deported him
self with venerable dignity and power.
He was quite superb
Again. at the conclusion of the first
act when Father Junpero Sierra
throws himself at the foot of the cross
and prays for his beloved California,
Osbourne carried his audience into the
realms of utter belief and made more
poignant the somewhat anachronisti-
cal third act, wherein the missions he
had founded are destroyed and the
work of his hands is brought low while
an evil generation laughs and does not
know.
This third act is tied to the first
two by means of Ubaldo, the first baby
to be baptized in California. In the
last act, Ubaldo is an old man and
keeper of the crumbling mission al San
Juan. Herein appears. for the first
time in the drama, Sonora Josefa Ycrba.
played with effective vocalism by Luz
cretia del Vale. She mourns the fall
of the ST Francis missions and invokes
the memory of Sierra
A procession OF Indians enter, seek
ing to find a burial place for their be-
loved dead-a friar who died of starva-
ton There isn't any theatric reason
Tor the introduction of the scene, but
it is justified, nevertheless. on a plane
not susceptible Of critical narrowing.
MISSION FALL PERSONAL Loss
The fall of the missions has been
made a disaster immediateoas per-
senaI loss, and the Indians who beg the
privilege of burying their dead in the
consecrated ground of the mission seem
alive. One, who indicates his religion
by the declaration that he says good
morning, God" and good night. God,'
produces an effect not to be calculated
In the ordinary scheme of dramatics.
The fiesta scene in the second act is
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