Kate Rolling (Sara Haider, left) in her Brighton clothing shop with employees Miss Blagg (Gina Daniels, center) and the fashionable Maisie Glow (Olivia Gilliatt), in Elizabeth Baker’s Partnership.
An advantageous business offer, with a loveless marriage thrown in: this is one of the would-be “partnerships” around which Elizabeth Baker’s 1917 drama Partnership, a feminist parable and Romantic cri de coeur in the guise of a comedy of manners, revolves. As is so often the case with the plays that the Mint Theater Company rescues from obscurity, the issues are both historically specific and still relevant. Must the demands of business always be at odds with personal nourishment? Should one prize practicality or love? Does respectability entail a life of drudgery, while a life well lived means being branded as “mad”?
Partnership is the third Baker play to receive a Mint production, following The Price of Thomas Scott (2019) and Chains (2022). The three-act comedy, directed by Jackson Grace Gay, begins and ends in a clothing shop in Brighton, England, owned by Kate Rolling (Sara Haider, in her Off-Broadway debut); the Kate of the first act is wholly transformed by Act III, due to an Act II trip to the Downs, a hilly wilderness near Brighton, that throws everything into relief.
Maisie charms the prestigious neighboring shop owner George Pillatt (Gene Gillette). Photographs by Todd Cerveris.
Having secured the business of Lady Smith-Carr-Smith (Christiane Noll), a “society pet,” which promises further business from an unnamed duchess, Kate has seemingly triumphed. Yet part of her seems unfulfilled by this: “Such a bore—having to manage people. Lots of babies.” “You make it pay,” Miss Blagg (Gina Daniels), one of Kate’s employees, says, to which Kate responds, “So I do.” The first impression of Kate may be that this is enough. Maisie Glow (Olivia Gilliatt), her ebullient and fashionable colleague, certainly thinks so. The two of them are even turning down marriage proposals from those not suitable: “I’m beginning to realize we’re eligible young women,” says Kate. “So we are, my dear,” Maisie replies, “especially now the Duchess may come in. … Up goes our price.”
Maisie is quite literal: there is a price, and it’s met by George Pillatt (Gene Gillette), a punctilious shop owner who wants to buy a vacant shop and join forces with Kate, and, for convenience’ sake, get married. Gillette’s Pillatt is hilariously tightly wound—any word he has to utter that isn’t related to business seems to cause him genuine pain:
And now I wish to put another point. I want to suggest, to propose a partnership—in another sense, and that is—marriage. Being a plain businessman I wish to be quite frank in the matter, and so I have not hesitated to put the business part of the plan foremost.
Maisie and Kate at the shop, where Acts I and III take place, in Baker’s 1917 drama.
Who could say no to that? Neither Kate nor Maisie would conceive of it; only Miss Blagg expresses disappointment that Kate has relinquished any notion of love.
Enter Mr. Fawcett (Joshua Echebiri), a family friend of Pillatt’s who is spoken about as though he’s an inept vagabond. In reality he’s a socially awkward dreamer, a man who inherited a business that didn’t interest him, so he now invests in dyes and spends certain months walking the bucolic English countryside, soaking in the wonders of nature. During a trip to the Downs, Fawcett is able to converse with Kate alone, and he infects her with his Romantic outlook, his dislike of motor vehicles, and his passion for nature. Fawcett doesn’t advocate skipping work altogether, but rather using its “dividends” differently, to enjoy periods of time away from the rat race. In today’s parlance, he’s advocating a “work-life balance.”
Kate begins playing hooky from the shop, even missing an appointment with the duchess, a breach that Pillatt seems almost physically unable to handle. The third act, which depicts the choice that Kate must make, is the strongest of the production. Though Kate is initiated into a possible new way of life through a man’s guidance, Haider never makes her seem naively impressionable, but instead someone making up her own mind.
Kate with Christiane Noll as Lady Smith-Carr-Smith, an influential customer.
Alexander Woodward’s set design for Kate’s small shop is richly detailed, while the act on the Downs uses an adaptation of James Hart Dyke’s Winter Evening Light on Windmill (2021) as the backdrop. Kindall Houston Almond’s costumes brilliantly enhance the characterizations, from aristocrats and the fashion-conscious to members of the working-class.
If Chains felt like the unearthing of a masterpiece, Partnership more modestly fulfills the Mint’s mission of producing “worthwhile plays from the past that have been lost or forgotten.” It deals with many of the same themes as Chains but in a breezy mode. There are some awkwardly written sequences, but all-around good acting and adept direction by Gay make the journey through Baker’s England a pleasant and rewarding one.
The Mint Theater production of Partnership runs through Nov. 12 at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday–Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tickets are available by visiting minttheater.org.
Playwright: Elizabeth Baker
Director: Jackson Grace Gay
Sets: Alexander Woodward
Costumes: Kindall Houston Almond
Lighting: Mary Louise Geiger
Sound: Daniel Baker & Co.
