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.

Hindle Wakes

B-

Once again, Mint Theater’s artistic director Jonathan Banks has rediscovered an interesting British play from the early 20th century and given it a first-rate production. The playwright is Stanley Houghton, a Manchester theater critic turned author who died tragically at 32 only a year after this play brought him wide acclaim in 1912. The play combines family drama, social criticism, ethical and moral dilemmas, satire and a dash of feminism. It reminded me a bit of Shaw minus much of the wit. When the mill owner’s spoiled son Alan (Jeremy Beck) is caught out after a weekend fling with mill hand Fanny (Rebecca Noelle Brinkley), whose father Christopher (Ken Marks) is an old friend of Alan’s father Nathaniel (Jonathan Hogan), everyone — from Fanny’s mother (Sandra Shipley) to Alan’s mother (Jill Tanner) to Alan’s fiancee Beatrice (Emma Geer) and her wealthy father Sir Timothy (Brian Reddy) — has an opinion about what Alan should do. Shouldn’t Fanny have a say in the matter? Stay tuned. The production has been lovingly staged with an attractive set by Charles Morgan, excellent costumes by Sam Fleming, impressive dialect work by Amy Stoller and smooth direction by Gus Kaikkonen. It’s slow moving and the accents can be a bit challenging, but if you have a taste for well-produced neglected plays, you will be rewarded. About the title, “Hindle” is the name of the imaginary Lancastrian town where the play is set. “Wakes” refers to Wakes Week, a now-vanished custom whereby the local industry closed down for a summer week so everyone could go on holiday. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.

The Suitcase under the Bed

C

The Mint Theater is to be commended for their ambitious efforts to renew interest in Teresa Deevy, an Irish playwright whose career had some success in the mid 1930’s. I did not see the three full-length plays they have presented since 2010, so I cannot judge how representative these four one-act plays are of her work. I did not find any of them fully satisfying. Marriage or the prospect thereof plays a part in each play. “Strange Birth” is little more than a brief character sketch that ends just as it is getting interesting. “In the Cellar of My Friend” was the most self-contained piece, but the characters were cliched and the situation unconvincing. “Holiday House” seemed like the first act of an abandoned play that attempted to blend Shaw with Coward. “The King of Spain’s Daughter” is grittier than the others, but the relationships among the characters were confusing. The production is admirable. The cast of seven (Ellen Adair, Gina Costigan, Sarah Nicole Deaver, Cynthia Mace, Aidan Redmond, Colin Ryan and A.J. Shively) is strong. Their Irish accents were mostly convincing. One of the main pleasures of the evening is to see them play multiple roles. Before the second and fourth plays, one of the actors recites a poem with a verse that contains the title of the play that follows. The costumes by Andrea Varga and wigs are very good. The sets by Vicki R. Davis are modest, but attractive. Jonathan Bank’s direction is leisurely. The praise Mint’s earlier productions of Deevy’s plays received may have set me up for disappointment. Perhaps some manuscripts are left in a suitcase under the bed for a reason. Running time: two hours 20 minutes including intermission.

Rutherford & Son **

(Please click on the title to see the full review.)
The Mint Theater fills an important niche in New York theatrical life by reviving plays that have either been lost or forgotten. Their latest production is this family drama by Githa Sowerby, a smash hit in London in 1912, when women playwrights were rarely heard from. John Rutherford (Robert Hogan) is head of a large glassworks in the north of England. His tyrannical behavior has, to a greater or lesser extent, ruined the lives of his three adult children -- John Jr. (Eli James), who had run off and married a London shopgirl Mary (Allison McLemore), and has reluctantly returned home upon the birth of their child; Richard (James Patrick Nelson), a well-meaning but ineffectual priest; and Janet (Sara Surrey), an embittered 37-year-old who has begun a secret affair with the trusted plant manager Martin (David Van Pelt). John Sr.'s dour sister Ann (Sandra Shipley) completes this loveless household. Dale Soules has a juicy part as the mother of a plant worker whom Rutherford has fired. When John Jr. claims to have invented a manufacturing process that could save the glassworks and tries to sell it to his father, all the family strains reach the breaking point. The socioeconomic tensions of the period add to the drama. The quality of the acting varies widely: Surrey makes a strong Janet, but James is consistently overwrought and declamatory as John Jr. A word about the accents: I question whether the authenticity gained by trying (with varying degrees of success) to imitate a regional accent, in this case Geordie,  justifies the loss of comprehensibility it entails, particularly when the play is performed outside England. I also wonder why the Mint has seen fit to revive this play for the second time in ten years with the same director (Richard Corley), set designer (Vicki R. Davis), costume designer (Charlotte Palmer-Lane) and three of the same actors. All in all, it makes for an interesting, but longish evening. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes including two intermissions.