Theatre in Review: Days to Come (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)

	Roderick Hill, Janie Brookshire. Photo: Todd Cerveris

Days to Come isn't a very good play, and I'm awfully glad that the Mint is presenting it. That's a contradiction, I know, but we're talking about Lillian Hellman, who for her seventy-nine years on this earth was a walking bundle of contradictions, a gifted playwright who gave us at least one American classic but who, in the words of Frank Rich, "exerted her unstoppable will across a half-century of American cultural and political history," ending up reviled by many for her efforts. At least two plays in this century have laid bare her self-aggrandizing ways and taste for moral blackmail, and entire academic careers could be spent identifying the lies and myths embedded in her multiple volumes of memoirs. But as the lady herself, who died in 1984, recedes from memory, the plays remain. A darkly glittering revival of The Little Foxes last season provided all the evidence anyone might need that, at her best, she turned out peerlessly crackling dramas that engaged the sociopolitical realities of the day. Among her specialties were airtight construction and elegantly expressed malice. Consider these lines in The Little Foxes: Regina, the antiheroine, gazes at her ailing husband and murmurs, "I hope you die. I hope you die soon. I'll be waiting for you to die." These few words tell you everything you need to know about Regina's furious ambition and the rotten state of her marriage.

Aside from so-so productions of Toys in the Attic and Another Part of the Forest -- both of them ripe for first-class revivals -- we haven't seen much of Hellman's work recently, quite possibly because of her status as a cultural lightning rod. But it's time for another look at such major plays as Watch on the Rhine, The Searching Wind, and The Autumn Garden, as well as those mentioned above. (Some brave souls might even steel themselves and give The Children's Hour a whirl, although it may seem creaky and false to today's audiences.) The Mint, a company that, under artistic director Jonathan Bank, never makes the obvious choice, has opted to stage the playwright's biggest flop, Days to Come; if it runs aground -- which it does, badly, in the second act -- it is, nevertheless, a fascinating work with several notable aspects.

Written and staged at the height of the Depression, Days to Come is often referred to as a labor drama; in fact, it is a family tragedy set against a background of worker unrest. As is typical of Hellman, the family, the Rodmans, is rife with neuroticism and betrayal. Andrew, a brush manufacturer -- the action is set in an Ohio factory town -- is unhappy that the workers, many of them his friends and neighbors, are striking for the right to form a union. Advised by his lawyer, Henry Ellicott -- whose motives are not exactly disinterested -- the feckless, easily influenced Andrew agrees to bring a gang of strikebreaking goons to town. He doesn't forsee that this decision will have a flurry of unintended consequences, including the death of innocents, the poisoning of relations between the Rodmans and the town, and the laying-bare of his sterile, empty marriage.

The first act of Days to Come fairly bristles with dramatic possibilities, as the Rodmans are made to share their home with the criminal element; a mood of tense expectation descends as Sam Wilkie, head troublemaker, and his boys work at stirring up trouble that can justify mobilizing the police against the workers. As always, Hellman's acid tone proves invigorating: When Cora, Andrew's sister, a middle-aged baby forever crying out for attention, refuses to dip into her securities for a much-needed loan to the family business, claiming vulnerability because of her unmarried state, Ellicott observes, "Unfortunately, in the business world there is no reward for virginity." Wilkie, trying to tame his associates, says by way of rebuke, "Try to act like you've been in a house with a bathroom before." One of them, Mossie, sizing up the Rodmans, adds, "You can't tell about people like this. They say, in the papers, talking fine, what they wouldn't do, and then they sneak off and take a shot in bed at the first thing that comes along."

For a good two-thirds of Days to Come's running time, Hellman juggles all sorts of developments, including fiscal maneuvering, an inconvenient body that gets dumped where it can do the most harm, and a possible dalliance between Julie, Andrew's bored, aimless wife, and Leo Whalen, the strike's organizer. The latter has one of the play's most arresting speeches, in which he admits to Julie that he hates the poor, asking her, "Do you think you can love the smell that comes from dirty skin, or the scum on dishes, or the holes in the floor with the bugs coming through? Or the meanness and the cowardice that comes with poverty?" And yet he feels compelled to do something for them, to get them to help themselves. It is the very opposite of the romantic, solidarity-forever speechmaking at the heart of Clifford Odets' contemporaneous Waiting for Lefty. Whatever Hellman was about in Days to Come, she wasn't copying her Broadway colleagues.

But just when events -- most notably the death of a bystander -- come to a head, the playwright goes off on an unaccustomed talking jag, convening several characters for an extended postmortem that drains much of the evening's excitement. Her points have been made; there's no need for this indulgence in postgame color commentary. Especially damaged by this is Andrew, who spends much of the play offstage, only to enter at the last minute armed with plenty of windy speeches. (The fine actor Larry Bull is left at a disadvantage from which his performance never recovers.) It makes for a dispiriting denouement and is likely to leave the audience not unreasonably wondering exactly what Days to Come is about.

Until this point, J. R. Sullivan's production maintains a steadily mounting tension, aided by a solid, and sometimes inspired, cast. Mary Bacon's Cora -- who has been treated all her life like a cossetted, vicious housepet -- is both an appallingly exact case study in neurosis and a fine example of period acting style. Dressed by costume designer Andrea Varga in a series of frocks that look both costly and tasteless, she delivers an unrelenting series of demands -- most of them related to food -- oblivious to the scheming unfolding around her; she is also a first-class sniper, aiming most of her poisoned verbal darts at Julie. Dan Daily, oozing false goodwill like a butter-basted turkey, is thoroughly sinister as Wilkie, whose coolly professional attitude never falters, even in the face of murder. As Ellicott, who sets the plot in motion, Ted Deasy is as unruffled as his expensive suits, concerned only with wrapping up the skullduggery in time for his vacation at White Sulphur Springs. In addition to offering a point of view that makes a scalding contrast to that of the Rodmans, Roderick Hill sharply conveys Leo's fatalism and growing attraction to Julie. The one slightly false note is struck by Janie Brookshire, who struggles to get a handle on Julie. It's no easy task, as the character drifts through the action, unable to commit to any point of view. It doesn't help that she is often dressed in a way that feels less than period and sports a coiffure that looks thoroughly of today.

Otherwise, the production has the usual Mint polish. Harry Feiner's set, with its patterned wall coverings, Deco furnishings, and curved upstage window (revealing trees displaying their fall colors), is a fine study in period regional wealth; the stage left wall opens up for a seamless transition to Leo's office in Act II. Christian DeAngelis' lighting is solid, and Jane Shaw's sound, including the rumble of an angry crowd and a radio broadcast of "It's a Sin to Tell a Lie," is equally fine. (The scene-setting music sounds to me like postwar jazz, a slightly strange choice given the overall fidelity to the period.)

Even though it disappoints, for anyone with a serious interest in Hellman and her work, Days to Come is a must; the chance of another first-class production anytime in the near future is vanishingly small. And the production offers many of the pleasures one associates with the Mint's revivals. But it will help enormously if you approach it with the clear understanding that not every failure by an eminent playwright is a lost gem. It's our good luck that Hellman learned from her mistakes and moved on to the most fertile period of her career. -- David Barbour