THEATER: Mary Broome

For my first review back after an unusually long "vacation," and for a show being produced by the normally wonderful Mint Theater Company, I wish I had more positive things to write. But this dull, uninspiring, and often muddled revival of 1911's Mary Broome should have been swept back into the closet it was buried in. The supposedly scandalous "upstairs/downstairs" relationship between feckless, prodigal Leonard Timbrell (Roderick Hill) and the except-for-this-one-instance-entirely-wholesome maid Mary Broome (Janie Brookshire) will be relevant only to those most die-hard Downton Abbey fans. Even then, playwright Allan Monkhouse's poorly sketched scenarios -- almost all of which leave the action offstage -- are more likely to bore than titillate, especially with their monotonous lessons on propriety, as blustered by Leonard's father, Edward (Graeme Malcolm), and the cloyingly snobbish (and heartless) portrayals of Leonard's siblings, Ada and Edgar (Katie Fabel and Rod Brogan), to say nothing of his soon-to-be sister-in-law, Sheila Ray (Julie Jesneck).

The insubstantial plot is only worsened by Jonathan Bank's direction, which races so quickly through each act (the entire production, with intermission, is well under two hours) that even the cast trips up on their arguments. Roger Hanna's blatant set makes little sense either: while the family portraits that limn the stage may fit the pomp and circumstance of the first two acts, the choice to reverse them in the third (just as the family has turned their back on Leonard, so have the people in the paintings) is a distractingly cheap joke, as the portraits have no place in Mary's shabby home. The same goes for the fourth and final act, which changes the pictures again: symbolic or not, it's a counterproductive embellishment, one that takes away from the gravity of Mary's loss. Monkhouse is already all over the place -- just look at the aimlessly comedic introduction of Mary's parents in Act III (Jill Tanner and the delightful understudy, Peter Cormican) -- Bank can't afford to also meander. 

All this might hold up if at least the characters changed, but either the actors are incapable of shifting or the script itself (the more likely culprit) shortchanges them of any real growth. Roderick Hill's Leonard is a fast-talking, amoral rascal: he does a fine, albeit increasingly bland and irksome, job of it. Janie Brookshire's Mary, on the other hand, is all too accommodating, matter-of-factly marrying Leonard after his father makes him "do the right thing" by the pregnant maid ("Well, I want to marry someone"), just as calmly allowing him to run off and neglect their child, and ultimately not even blaming him for their child's death. Instead, she abruptly announces that she's taking off with a milkman: this is neither a drama nor a comedy, it's a theatrical checklist. Finally, there's Leonard's mother, Mrs. Timbrell (Kristin Griffith), whom Leonard keeps insisting is exactly like him -- a wild, rebellious creature. If only. Mary Broome is in dire need of a live wire; instead, it's stuck with stiff, dry broom thistles. 

The Fifth Column

Photo/Richard Termine

In his introduction to The Fifth Column, Ernest Hemingway writes that "while I was writing the play the Hotel Florida, where we lived an worked, was struck by more than thirty high explosive shells. So if it is not a good play perhaps that is what is the matter with it. If it is a good play, perhaps those thirty some shells helped write it." Like the statement, his play is wishy-washy: at some points, an ironic, self-deprecating look at the lifeless insistences of counter-espionage, at others a cheesy romantic comedy styled in the mannerisms of '30s movies (the play was written in 1937), and also a play about slow, hot days -- Tennessee Williams with the booze, but without the passion. Everything about Jonathan Bank's direction of this play is slow, including the scene changes, and perhaps that's meant to help the text itself seem more urgent -- but it's a failure, even in the interrogation sequences. What once may have been a startling look at the dirty truths of war is now a passive play filled with cryptic remarks and unfinished characters. (This is most obvious in Max [Ronald Guttman], who always seems eager to fight for the party, but just as ready to beg out of any actual consequences: "Please, please, please. I go.)

At heart, The Fifth Column tells the story of the doomed love between Dorothy Bridges -- " a bored Vassar bitch" -- and Philip, a notorious drunk and all-around mannerless man (not only does he steal Dorothy from Robert Preston [Joe Hickey], but he takes the guy's room, too). To that end, Heidi Armbruster is magnificent: she plays a bright-eyed optimist, too conceitedly American to know any better, and makes as a great foil for Kelly AuCoin's easy-going sarcasm. But as Philip, Mr. AuCoin is far too groomed and nothing shakes up his character: not the heavy drinking, not the night-time excursions looking for insurgents, not even the flirtations with the local tramp, Anita (Nicole Shalhoub). As a result, there's never any chemistry between the antihero and the dim damsel, and their love is as artificial as the quips that spring from their lips. Even the boozing, which can be a sort of heroic or romantic character trait, is cheery and edgeless -- so much so that if not for Jane Shaw's sharp sound design waking us with the crisp sounds of midnight shelling or the roiling chants of dissenters outside, there'd be no indication of Madrid being a war zone.

Perhaps, in an escapist sense, that's what Hemingway does here, retreating to the safety of writing from within the walls of a hotel that's actively being shelled. Hemingway even creates two personalities for Philip, a stark and dismal day-time self, and a starry-eyed night-time self. (Neither Hemingway's writing nor Mr. AuCoin's performance adequately capture this mood.) The result is a play that seems written day by day, in a mess of jangled nerves, and which was never cohesively edited back into a whole. There's no focus in the scenes either: at one moment, the play is making tacky jokes about Spanish citizens, with Carlos Lopez milking a terrible accent for comic relief in his role as the needy Manager. In another, Hemingway is boldly condemning American ignorance: Dorothy tells the maid, Petra (Teresa Yenque), that the shelling was lovely, as only someone disassociated from violence can. Petra replies: "In Progresso, in my quarter, there were six killed in one floor. This morning they were taking them out and all the glass gone in the street. There won't be any more glass this winter." What sells it, however, is Mrs. Armbruster's casual response: "Here there wasn't any one killed."

One could argue that The Fifth Column works as semi-historical documentation of the author's service as a war reporter, or as an intriguing contrast for Hemingway's novels. I don't agree that this play -- or this production -- works (unless one's battling insomnia), but I would urge them, simply on the occasional strength of pseudo-domestic life on the fringe, and the early signs of American foreign ignorance, to archive this play. I'd urge them to archive it today.