One cannot fault the Mint for its taste. For 20 years, this hard-working company has endeavored to refresh plays that had gone musty in the attics of history; artistic director Jonathan Bank has done much to restore the reputations of works unfairly snubbed by fickle theatrical fashion. His latest worthy project is Mary Broome (1911), a discomfiting hybrid of comedy and issue play, in which the English playwright Allan Monkhouse applies a Shavian razor to the selfishness of the upper classes and the material limits of romantic love.
Monkhouse’s plot revolves around a rich, indolent young cad, Leonard (Roderick Hill), who is forced to marry the family maid, Mary (Janie Brookshire), after getting her in the family way. Leonard fancies himself a provocateur and litterateur, but he is little more than a brat; his exquisite sensitivity to his own feelings leaves him callous to everyone else’s. But Mary’s sense of inferiority—in sex, class and education—leaves her powerless to curb his capriciousness. Monkhouse promisingly sets this mismatched couple in a world of righteous conventionality, where neither of them belongs. But Bank’s thin-Mint production only partly succeeds in evoking that conflict. Roger Hanna’s set does well on its budget and includes a pair of clever twists. But the staging often lacks the crispness and confident period acting (including credible accents) to convey the show’s key scenes, which turn on nuances of propriety and tone. Blowing the dust off a play, though laudable, is not always enough; in this case, more polish would help.—Adam Feldman