Theatre in Review: Garside's Career (Mint Theater Company/Theatre Row)

	Daniel Marconi, Amelia White. Photo: Maria Baranova

Jonathan Bank, artistic director of the Mint -- or, as I like to think of him, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Plays -- has stated innumerable times that he doesn't dig up forgotten works just for the archaeological sport of it. Indeed, the best of his company's productions cast a clarifying light on the present, demonstrating conclusively that there is nothing new in the world. Consider the case of Garside's Career, about a working-class striver who, thanks to his knack for saying nothing (but saying it beautifully), ends up in Parliament, backed by an army of followers in thrall to his empty, yet stirring, rhetoric. Before long, he can't be bothered with the hard, dull business of governing, opting instead for the thrill of live rallies. Was playwright Harold Brighouse a prophet, or what?

Garside's Career is a comedy of manners about a demagogue, deploying its wit to issue a warning about populist politics. Peter Garside is a Midlands workman, a mechanic, who, despite the pressures of class and the need to hold down a job -- he has a widowed mother to support -- lands a BA in engineering. "What a triumph for our class," notes Margaret, his more-or-less intended. There's no wedding in the offing, however, once Margaret learns of his intentions to continue his budding career as a speaker. (There's a reason he is nicknamed "silver-tongued Garside.") "I've seen men ruined by this itch to speak," she warns him. "You know them. Men we thought would be real leaders of the people. And they spoke, and spoke, and soon said all they had to say, became mere windbags trading on a reputation."

Margaret knows whereof she speaks; before you can say "man of the people," Peter is an MP, representing Labour, of course, but living in posh digs and wearing custom suits. He is also making a play for Gladys, the wealthy daughter of his hometown mayor. That there is a spark between them is undeniable. But even Gladys, who chafes under the restrictions placed on nice young women in 1915, is unprepared for the cynicism of Peter's proposal: He wants six months to make his fortune. Then he will bring her to London, where she craves to live, and he will have a trophy wife to secure his social position. It's the kind of marital horse-trading in which the upper classes regularly participated; for it to happen between classes -- indeed, proposed by someone from Peter's social status -- is something else altogether.

Peter's master plan unravels soon enough, thanks to some furious party bosses and an inconvenient sex scandal. To be sure, Garside's Career, a product of the well-made-play era, isn't a marvel of construction. Its second act (there are four) proposes the idea of two class-shattering romances without following through on one of them. The fourth act features Margaret, like the cavalry, riding to Peter's salvation, pulling him out of the rut into which he has fallen after his disastrous turn of fortune; the controlling woman/weak man concept feels like a dry run for Hobson's Choice, his best-known (and more entertaining) work, written a year later. In any case, the rogue Peter is more engaging than the humbled Peter.

But, line by line, the play sparkles with wit and perception. "You don't know the glorious sensation of holding a crowd in the hollow of your hand, mastering it, doing what you like with it," Peter says, foreshadowing the century of demagogues and dictators, both fictional and real, to follow. His technique is to "take a tiny grain of truth, dress it up in a pompous parade of rhetoric, and deliver it in the manner of an oracle. It's a question of making my points tell. Sincerity doesn't matter." (The press takes to calling him "Platitudinous Peter.") Gladys coolly notes, "If I turned myself into a human gramophone, I shouldn't boast about it, Mr. Garside. It's not very creditable to live by fooling the public." Earlier, launching his run for office, he urges Margaret to marry him, saying, "Weddings are always popular. See what an advertisement it will be." Was ever a woman in this humor wooed?

Matt Dickson's direction isn't detail-perfect -- Would Gladys wear opera gloves at home? Would she bend a knee to greet Peter's mother? -- but he keeps things moving at a crisp, crackling pace. With a mop of curls, extravagant mustache, and go-getter attitude, Daniel Marconi makes Peter a plausible working-class comer who embraces the nicer things in life without a second thought. In a cast without a weak link, there are several standouts. Amelia White wrings every drop of self-pity out of Peter's ulterior, self-sacrificing mother, happily ensconced in Peter's sitting room, the better to frustrate his romantic ways. Sara Haider again displays her well-honed high comedy technique as Gladys, a well-bred thrill-seeker not above a little slumming with Peter but horrified at making a lifetime commitment. Avery Whitted is perfectly vacuous as Gladys' empty-headed brother, whose dependence on his family income makes him a kind of welfare king. Melissa Maxwell is a model of controlled malice as the lady of quality who holds sway over Margaret's teaching career. "You have to earn your living. An orphan, I understand," she says in strikingly pitiless tones. The role of Margaret is, in truth, a bit dreary -- she is saddled with being the Author's Voice, even if her opinions are well-expressed -- but Madeline Seidman makes a solid argument for her character's intelligence and clarifying common sense.

The set design by Christopher Swader and Justin Swader is a sensible, stylish solution for a play with three detailed locations -- a sort of warehouse, defined by brick walls and a skylight, filled with furniture that can be quickly arranged into new configurations. Dickson stages these changeovers with remarkable efficiency, featuring cast members singing period tunes such as "Solidarity Forever." Those opera gloves aside, Kindall Almond's costumes leave no question about who belongs to which social class. Yiyuan Li's lighting includes an attention-getting burst of sidelight for the opening and a lively night-into-morning sequence that paces the final act. Carsen Joenk's sound design includes an opening montage of bells, industrial machines, and train whistles that neatly underscores the play's setting and time frame.

And even if Peter meets his match in Margaret, the play's windup is surprisingly equivocal. Garside's Career has little use for either crowd-pleasing nonsense or the pretensions of the aristocracy. It's not at all clear that Peter, having reaped the harvest of his overreaching, has learned the error of his ways; you can't keep a glib man down. In any case, this is a solid revival of a lively play that strikingly prefigures so much that has come after it. Once again, the Mint proves that, in the theatre, the past remains vital and alive. - David Barbour