Mary Broome

Once again Jonathan Bank’s Mint Theater Company has found an interesting antique play. This one, beautifully produced and tastefully directed by Bank, is the hundred year old Mary Broomeby Allan Monkhouse.

The central character is a good-looking upper crust rake (Roderick Hill). He’s a charming bounder, who, raised without ambition to achieve anything, is now unfit for work of any kind and gets along as a high-class schnorrer (moocher). He has seduced Mary, the maid (Janie Brookshire), and she’s pregnant. That’s the setup.

The encounters between his family— sympathetic mother (Kristen Griffith) and stern overbearing father (Graeme Malcolm), square brother (Rod Brogan) – and various relatives, and eventually Mary’s working-class parents (Douglas Rees and Jill Tanner) make for contrasts dense with humor that are lots of fun.

Perfectly lighted by Nicole Pearce, the physical sets by Roger Hanna are excellent, but the morphing paintings on the walls go, set to set, from super-real classic to strangely surreal, and it’s a bit jarring, nor does it match the content of the play’s proceedings.

Ultimately, Mary Broome gives us a bad social contract between the two leads with no growth or change for the man and a growing strength in Mary. However, any expectations that he might change, or that she might climb the social ladder, that love might conquer all, are not realized, nor are the mother’s hinted-at secrets revealed, and there is no real catharsis at the end. It’s an enjoyable evening, performed by a top notch cast in superb period costumes by Martha Hally, but it left me a bit empty at the end.