Theatre in Review: Fashions for Men (Mint Theater Company)Fashions for Men is set in a Budapest haberdashery where the principal product is comic irony, impeccably silken, and available by the yard. Ferenc Molnár's comedy pits an almost absurdly virtuous protagonist against an array of connivers, but the laughter they provoke is born of wisdom and understanding, not malice, and you won't want to part with a single one of them. If you've ever seen an Ernst Lubitsch film, you'll know what to expect from the new production of the Mint. The store in question is owned by Peter Juhász, and it is on the verge of bankruptcy, largely because of his good nature. Peter can't bring himself to dun a single nonpaying customer, and he bestows on his staff gifts that he can ill afford. (We see him providing a battery of expensive toys for the son of a lowly clerk.) Peter is unaware that his wife, Adele, is having an affair with Oscar, the store's most accomplished sales clerk, and her attempt at breaking the bad news demonstrates how his virtuous nature drives normal people mad: Her confession of infidelity causes him only to praise her for her honesty and to assure her that they will weather this storm. "I can't bear how good you are," Adele says, on the verge of tears. In order to stave off his creditors, Peter needs a large sum of money he has given to Adele -- who has given it to Oscar, to invest in a business in Berlin, where they intend to live. Oscar brazenly argues that Peter owes them the money -- after all, he doesn't want Adele to starve, does he? Still, having lost his wife and his store in one fell swoop, Peter remains unbowed: "Love and trust are always repaid in kind in this world," he says. By the end of the first act, you will be convinced that the world owes him a living. Fortunately, Peter has a patron, an aristocrat known only as The Count, who hires him as the general manager of his cheesemaking business. Peter heads off to The Count's country estate; coming along for the ride is Paula, his former secretary, who has been enjoying an extended flirtation with The Count and sees champagne and furs in her future. Once again, however, Peter's decency proves to be the enemy of capitalism, as his well-intentioned behavior threatens to drive the cheese business into the ground. By now, The Count is at his wit's end but unable to confront Peter, who, he says mournfully, "has the eyes of a devoted horse." He gives Peter a make-or-break task, to fire a disloyal employee who has been leaking company secrets to a rival cheesemaker. Peter protests, "If you look into another's soul, it's impossible to judge him." "So don't look," snaps The Count. The process by which Peter is restored to prosperity and personal happiness constitutes the rest of Fashions for Men, aided by Molnár's deft plotting and his wryly forgiving eye for various forms of human folly. Davis McCallum directs with a supremely light hand, never pushing for laughs; he can't prevent a slightly jarring shift into farce in Act II, but this is not a serious problem. He has also assembled a cast well aware that comedy works best when played with the utmost sincerity. As Peter, Joe Delafield, who looks a bit like the young Dan Duryea, invests what could be a one-note character with a variety of shadings, while never losing sight of the obtuse good nature that puts others on edge. ("Is it my fault that you're a saint?" snaps the exasperated Oscar.) Delafield shines especially in the Act II scene in which, trying to fire that treacherous employee, Peter ends up comforting him and giving him his watch. As Paula, Rachel Napoleon, who is something of a ringer for Michelle Dockery, nicely segues from brittle gold digger to the one woman capable of loving Peter and keeping a useful curb on his kindness. Kurt Rhoads' Count is amusingly fatheaded, a superannuated romantic whose diction is riper than his cheese. John Tufts plays the scoundrel Oscar as a model of smiling urbanity. And Jeremy Lawrence earns plenty of laughs as a clerk with an unerring nose for gossip, fixing his basilisk stare at his erring colleagues. (A running gag, in which dawdling customers forever prevent him from seeing the first act of Lohengrin, is a steady source of fun.) Naturally, in a play titled Fashions for Men, a stylish production design is imperative. Daniel Zimmerman's store set, with its Art Nouveau touches, richly patterned walls, and such details as rows of celluloid collars on display, is a shopper's dream. He also provides the office in The Count's castle, an atmospheric arrangement of timber and stone. Martha Hally's costumes capture the fine points of men's suits and the extensive, sometimes plushly upholstered, ladies silhouettes of the period. (The play was written in 1908.) Eric Southern's lighting, which depicts sun pouring in through the shop's open doors, and Jane Shaw's sound, which makes use of Hungarian music, are fine. Molnár, one of several Hungarian playwrights who were prominent on Broadway before World War II, is best known for that repertory staple The Play's the Thing, and for Liliom, which was adapted into the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. (Another play, The Guardsman, was a crucial success for Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and several were adapted into popular films.) On the basis of this, it seems clear that the rest of his output is well worth investigating. Fashions for Men is a fine example of a certain kind of airy, carefree comedy which, sad to say, has almost entirely gone out of, well, existence. Perhaps if more young playwrights could experience it, the Molnár style might come back into fashion. -- David Barbour 
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