With this tender masterpiece of home-spun comedy, John Van Druten proves to all and sundry that sophistication is not his only forte. It's the heart-warming story of the Hansons, a poor but honest San Francisco family of a generation ago, and it's headed for the land of happy hits.

"Most of all," says daughter Katrin, "I remember Mama," Mama is kind, firm, and resourceful, and has four children to look after. There are Katrin, the oldest, who wants to be a writer; Christine, blonde, the prettiest member of the clan; Nels, the young man of the house; and Dagmar, the precocious, animal-loving seven-year-old girl. Naturally, Mama doesn't want her children to fear poverty, so she invents a neat little myth about a bank account. But of course, no one ever "goes to the bank" because Mama always figures a way out of every emergency.

It's "Mama's bank account" that gave Kathryn Forbes the title for her novel. Van Druten adapted her idea for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and the result is a very appealing family portrait that remotely reminds one of "Life With Father,' but makes the Clarence Day hit look like a Radcliffe Idler production.

Mr. Van Druten has written and staged with the tasteful touch that made "Voice of the Turtle" a Broadway sensation. His characterizations in "I Remember Mama" have a human quality that few in the American theatre have achieved: the irresistible simplicity of good, kind, honest people.

Mady Christians as Mama is quiet and brave and wise and she does a standout job. But right along with Mama is Oscar Homolka as Uncle Chris, "a black Norwegian" who stamps around bossing the family, drinking liberally, and living in sin with "that woman" who is his housekeeper. Little Dagmar has a pet eat. Uncle Elizabeth, and Nels, her brother, identifies it as a man eat, and backs up his statement by saying, "I looked."

That's the most sex one finds in the entire play, and there's the real tribute. It's wholesome and refreshing and it has that certain thing called heart.