Days To Come

C-

In explaining the failure of her second play, which closed after barely a week on Broadway in 1936, Lillian Hellman commented: “I wanted to say too much.” That pretty much sums up the play’s shortcomings, as revealed in a revival by Mint Theater Company on Theater Row. We meet Andrew Rodman (Larry Bull; The Coast of Utopia), the well-meaning but ineffectual owner of a brush factory in a a small Ohio town, his restless unfulfilled wife Julie (Janie Brookshire; The Moundbuilders), his embittered spinster sister Cora (Mary Bacon; The Roads to Home), the domineering family attorney Henry Ellicott (Ted Deasy), the outspoken longtime family cook Hannah (Kim Martin-Cotten; Time and the Conways) and the maid Lucy (Betsy Hogg). When the factory workers go on strike, the union sends in organizer Leo Whalen (Roderick Hill) to advise their leader, Andrew’s friend since childhood Thomas Firth (the barely audible Chris Henry Coffey). Henry persuades the naive Andrew to bring in strikebreakers led by Sam Wilkie (Dan Daily; The Dining Room) and his henchmen Mossie Dowel (Geoffrey Allen Murphy; The Nance) and Joe Easter (Evan Zes; Incident at Vichy). With eleven characters competing for our attention, there is little opportunity for any of them to strike more than one note. There is more speechifying than conversation. It is difficult to ascertain where the focus of the play lies. The significance of the title escapes me. The level of the acting is not up to the Mint’s usual standard. The attractive period set by Harry Feiner (The Traveling Lady) includes a stool that creaks so loudly that it competes with the actor atop it. The costumes by Andrea Varga (The Suitcase under the Bed) include a dress for Julie with an aggressively busy pattern that it is an assault on the eyes. J.R. Sullivan’s direction does not pull things together. It was far from a successful evening, but it was interesting to see the state of Hellman’s craft just before she wrote her great family drama The Little Foxes. Running time: two hours ten minutes, including intermission.

The Little Foxes

A-

While the critics never placed Lillian Hellman in the first rank of American playwrights, her work, at least as exemplified by this 1939 family drama, has much to recommend it and is certainly worthy of an occasional revival. She surely knew how to write a tight plot and juicy roles that allow actors to show their mettle. Manhattan Theatre Club has assembled a first-rate cast for this production, led by Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon who alternate the roles of Regina and Birdie. This tale of an avaricious family greedy to progress from rich to filthy rich bears an extra frisson of timeliness today. We meet the Hubbard family in Alabama in 1900. Brothers Ben (Michael McKean) and Oscar (Darren Goldstein) are wooing a Chicago industrialist Mr. Marshall (David Alford) to build a cotton mill on their property. To keep the deal in the family, they need their sister Regina Giddens (Linney at my performance) to raise a third of the investment. Trouble is her husband Horace (Richard Thomas), who controls the pursestrings, is away in Baltimore convalescing from a heart condition and shows no inclination to return or even to respond to their increasingly frantic letters. Regina skillfully uses her leverage to win a better deal from her brothers and persuades her virtuous 17-year-old daughter Alexandra (Francesca Carpanini) to go to Baltimore to fetch Horace. Leo Hubbard (Michael Benz), the unsavory son of Oscar and Birdie, works in Horace’s bank and comes up with a shady plan that allows the brothers to proceed without Regina. When Horace returns, he discovers their plot and, unfortunately for him, reveals it to his wife. There is more scheming, a shocking scene between Horace and Regina and, surprisingly for its time, an ending in which evil is not punished, at least not explicitly. The role of Regina, catnip for such actresses as Tallulah Bankhead and Bette Davis, suits Linney well; she captures both the steeliness and the traces of charm. However, she is almost overshadowed by Cynthia Nixon’s superb performance as her sister-in-law Birdie, a delicate wounded bird driven to drink by her husband’s abuse; her monologue in the final act is absolutely wrenching. Linney and Nixon are so persuasive in these roles that is hard to imagine them in reverse. Even the servants are well-cast — Charles Turner as the butler Cal and Caroline Stefanie Clay as Addie, the housekeeper whose eye rolls and facial expressions speak louder than words. Jane Greenwood’s costumes are marvelous. Scott Pask’s living room set is fine except that the staircase, focus of a crucial scene, looks strangely cramped. Daniel Sullivan directs with a sure hand. The play is far from subtle, but, with such a fine production,  it is very entertaining. Running time: two hours 25 minutes including two intermissions.