The Mint Theater Company has been unearthing forgotten gems from the great canon of western drama for over the last two decades, producing intimate meticulously staged productions of plays scholars and critics have forgotten about. Seeing even a mediocre show provides the thrill of an archeological dig.
Miles Malleson was a successful playwright and screenwriter in England in the early-to-mid twentieth century and even appeared in Alfred Hitchcock films like Stage Fright in 1950 but his play from 1933, Yours Unfaithfully, was never produced. There’s a line towards the end of it in Mint’s world premiere production directed by artistic director Jonathan Bank that hints at the why: “Your man would be getting more out of life than anyone is properly supposed to. No, there’s got to be tragedy in your book! …or, better, if in the last chapter you came to see the folly of your ways; then you might sell the rights of it for an immense sum to the talkies.”
The subject of Malleson’s heartfelt comedy is what we now call ethical non-monogamy, and the person delivering those lines is Dr. Alan Kirby (Todd Cerveris), the best friend of the protagonist Stephen Meredith (Max Von Essen), a writer much like Malleson. Kirby had an affair with Stephen’s wife, Anne (Elisabeth Gray), years ago and they have all remained friends. We don’t see lives ruined, just characters imperfectly stumbling towards fulfillment.
Like in many other plays of a certain age, Henrik Ibsen’s masterpieces come to mind, there’s a lot of exposition to wade through to get to the meaty core. Much of the first act is weighed down in the kind of backstory where characters tell each other lots information they already know for no greater purpose than to clue us in. Stephen’s father is a father of the black robe variety (played with zest by Stephen Schnetzer) and gives Mallerson an outlet for his thoughts on religion and the folly of puritanical thinking. It’s better though when we get a richer peer into Stephen and Anne’s marriage.