Theatre in Review: Philip Goes Forth (Mint Theatre Company)

	Carole Healey and Christine Toy Johnson. Photo: Rahav Segev/Photopass

The action of Philip Goes Forth turns on the question of whether or not young Philip Eldridge should move to New York and become a playwright. Fair enough; the trouble is, playwright George Kelly provides a definitive answer early on, leaving him with two more acts to fill. This 1931 comedy of a young man, blessed with no particular talent yet enraptured by the siren song of Broadway, is a lesser effort from the keen-eyed satirist of The Show Off and The Torch Bearers.

Philip, who lives "in a city 500 miles from New York," is just out of college and works for the family business, an undefined enterprise that is extremely successful, especially for a play written in the depths of the Great Depression. (We are told it is worth $5 million.) As the play begins, he bursts into the home of his aunt, Mrs. Randolph, announcing that he and his father have fallen out over Philip's desire to undertake a career in the theatre. "He just sat there looking at me, 'til I thought he'd had a stroke," Philip says. (It's no wonder; Philip has commented that his father's life "lacks dramatic value.")

Mrs. Randolph does all she can to talk Philip out of his plan, and for good reason. Having never attempted to write anything, he relies on the thinnest of evidence that he has any kind of a dramatic gift. Exhibit A: Several college friends, studying playwriting, were impressed by his suggestions about their work. Exhibit B: He gazes out his aunt's window and, seeing a couple of strangers, spins a plot for the kind of potboiler that would be laughed off the stage before the second-act curtain. Mrs. Randolph tactfully suggests he is incurring the risk of a very public embarrassment ("It isn't like mere failure in an ordinary business."), but the hotheaded Philip hightails it to the big city, leaving behind his worried aunt, apoplectic father, and the nice young girl who alone believes in him.

The rest of Philip Goes Forth details the young man's disillusionment and gradual discovery that he belongs at home, but this is so easily done that Kelly must rely on his supporting characters to keep us interested and amused. Two of them fit the bill nicely. First up is Mrs. Oliver, a delightfully screwball socialite who can barely keep an idea in her head before it flees in search of more fertile ground. Pretending to be thrilled by Philip's plan, she shares the confidence that, as a young woman, she, too, wrote a play, titled Ironica. "Of course, they all felt that it was a bit ahead of its time; and as I look back at it now, it probably was," she adds. The look on Carole Healey's face as she contemplates this lost gift to the ages is priceless. When Mrs. Randolph says, "I don't think either of your husbands was very difficult, Florrie," Mrs. Oliver responds, "No, but they were there, dear," in bass notes signaling the deepest disapproval. Whenever Mrs. Oliver appears, her empty-headed pronouncements give the play a welcome lift.

Things also look up whenever Kathryn Kates is around as Mrs. Ferris, who manages the boarding house where Philip lands in New York. Once a prominent Broadway leading lady, she abandoned her career following a series of personal tragedies and now presides genially over a clientele of artistic hopefuls that consists mostly of kooks, poseurs, and the sadly second-rate. She is a warm, if melancholy, presence, especially when recounting her sad history, but when tragedy strikes her establishment, she moves coldly and efficiently to clean up the mess. And when she turns her attention to Philip, disabusing him of any pretensions to being talented ("There are millions of people all over the world that are spoiling their lives regretting that they didn't do something, or take up something, or keep on with something; when it's the blessing of God that the majority of them did just what they did."), the dialogue acquires an astringent, attention-getting quality it otherwise lacks.

If Kelly had drawn his leading characters with the same panache, Philip Goes Forth might make for a tartly appealing comedy about a foolish young man's flirtation with the muse. But despite Bernardo Cubria's charm and stage presence, Philip is an attitude, not a character; the same goes for Natalie Kuhn, saddled with a standard-issue ingénue role as the starry-eyed girl who loves him. Christine Toy Johnson has little more to do than be the voice of reason as Mrs. Randolph, and Cliff Bemis is required to bluster about as Mr. Eldridge, until he turns into a big softy for the finale. Given the presence of these one-note characters, Philip's fate is never in doubt; everyone is made to mark time until the inevitable happens.

Unsurprisingly, Jerry Ruiz's direction lacks the assurance of his work in Love Goes to Press, staged last season at the Mint. The production design is similarly uneven. Steven C. Kemp provides a pair of nicely contrasting sets: an all-white sitting room, combining deco and Federal design elements, and the "bohemian" parlor at Mrs. Ferris' with its aqua walls and multitude of abstract paintings, both of which are skillfully lit by Christian DeAngelis. The costumes, by Carisa Kelly, are another matter; she has tried to create a period effect using pieces of clothing from more readily available eras, a gamble that largely fails; Mrs. Randolph's first-act costume looks like something you could buy at Saks this week, and Mrs. Oliver makes her first entrance in a body-hugging, peekaboo black lace number that is notably unflattering. Toby Algya's sound design, including a barely heard gunshot that quietly signals disaster, is a solid piece of work.

The production's publicity materials suggest that Philip Goes Forth underperformed on Broadway in 1931 largely because Brooks Atkinson, in his New York Times review, misconstrued the play, noting "To discourage the neophytes about coming to New York and trying their fortune with the arts is to accept considerable responsibility." Kelly responded that Atkinson missed the point that Philip, in his heart of hearts, doesn't really want to write plays. I wonder if Atkinson was that far off, however. In the world of Philip Goes Forth, any attempt at artistic expression is seen as a foolish indulgence; the one truly talented character, Mrs. Ferris, gave up her career as an indulgence after times got tough. There isn't the slightest indication that one might find success and career satisfaction pursuing one's dream. It's a rather bleak vision for a comedy; after all, what if nobody had ever encouraged a young man named George Kelly?--David Barbour