Peter Garside (Daniel Marconi, left) is selling an idea; his fiancée Margaret (Madeline Seidman) isn’t buying it.
The Mint Theater Company is doing what it does best: acquainting audiences with a long-ago play, and author, most people have probably never heard of. Here the author is Harold Brighouse, and the play, Garside’s Career. Billed by the Mint as “bright, witty political satire,” it traverses more genres than that, also taking in domestic drama and commentary on relations between the sexes, and serves as parable about misplaced ambition. The production is mostly excellent. The bright and the witty are relative.
Gladys has an awkward encounter with Mrs. Garside (Amelia White).
If you’ve heard of Brighouse, it’s probably via Hobson’s Choice, his 1915 comedy that occasioned numerous revivals, a well-remembered 1954 film directed by David Lean, and the 1966 musical Walking Happy. Garside’s Career, also from 1915, hasn’t been much heard from, and maybe that has something to do with its frustrating title character. Peter Garside (Daniel Marconi) is a mechanic in a factory in fictional Midlandton, with his sights set far above that. He’s also a Socialist, the best-spoken among a group of fellow union men and rabble-rousers. With the backing of his doting mom (Amelia White, underplaying effectively), and the more ambivalent support of his schoolteacher fiancée, Margaret (Madeline Seidman), Peter seems poised for greater things.
Brighouse plants the seeds of conflict deftly: for Mrs. Garside it’s clear that her son can do no wrong, while Margaret evaluates him more objectively, and Mrs. Garside despises her for that. And those seeds sprout as Peter’s main chance surfaces: there’s a seat in Parliament that’s about to become vacant, and his colleagues want him to run for it.
The Mottrams: Gladys (Sara Haider), Freddie (Avery Whitted), and Lady Mottram (Melissa Maxwell).
He wins the seat, and at 26 he’s suddenly an MP, renting fancy London digs and soliciting the good graces of the well-to-do Mottrams, whose unseen paterfamilias is Midlandton’s mayor. Marriageable Gladys (Sara Haider) is amused by Peter; her brother Freddie (Avery Whitted) is a useless good-natured twit of the Freddy Eynsford-Hill sort; and outrage is the default mode of their mother (Melissa Maxwell, giving great Lady Bracknell vibes).
And here’s where Garside’s career, and Garside’s Career, begin to ride a bit off the rails. Are we supposed to like Peter? Brighouse keeps insisting that he’s a fiery, charismatic soul, able to sway crowds and inspire them to action. In the diminutive Marconi there is the fire, but not the charisma; and as Peter scales the ladder of success, he approaches the reprehensible. He abandons Margaret to woo Gladys, blackmails Gladys into possible marriage (adopting a “Say yes, or I’ll set the rabble on your home” attitude), and pursues a career that’s increasingly about personal advancement and less about helping anyone but himself. His modus operandi: “I take a tiny grain of truth, dress it up in a pompous parade of rhetoric, and deliver it in the manner of an oracle. … Sincerity doesn't matter.”
For all that, by current standards, his political infractions aren’t that egregious; it’s not like he pardons thousands of insurrectionists or allows food for starving children to rot. But he’s no one to cheer for, and as Peter progresses from hero to antihero, Garside’s Career founders. As in Hobson’s Choice, leave it to the sensible woman to clean things up, and Seidman invests Margaret with a beguiling mixture of grace and practicality. But it’s really hard to root for this couple to wind up together. Marconi’s relative charmlessness doesn’t help; Michael Schantz, as a Midlandton crony of Peter’s and an unswerving Socialist, has far more magnetism, and Garside’s Career might have played better had they switched roles.
Lady Mottram and Freddie encounter Margaret. Photographs by Maria Baranova.
It’s still an exemplary Mint production. The accents are on the money. Matt Dickson directs for high energy and brings out the laughs where they’re to be had. The set, by Christopher and Justin Swader, is on the busy side, but it’s entertaining to watch the actors change it while singing union anthems. Kindall Almond’s handsome costumes exude 1915, Yiyan Li’s lighting runs from dark (the Garsides’ working-class abode) to lavish (the Mottrams’ mansion and Peter’s London lodgings), and Carsen Joenk provides evocative sound effects, while letting the actors’ natural voices ring out.
Somewhat problematic material, then, but let’s once again salute the Mint for bringing a long-dormant theatrical era to vibrant life. Even lesser Harold Brighouse is literate, engaging, and of historical interest. If only there weren’t such a rotter at its core.
Garside’s Career runs through March 15 at Theater Row Stage 4 (410 W. 42nd St.). Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday (additional performance Wednesday, March 12), with matinees at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; minttheater.org.
Playwright: Harold Brighouse
Director: Matt Dickson
Set: Christopher and Justin Swader
Costumes: Kindall Almond
Lights: Yiyan Li
Sound: Carsen Joenk
