So this is what the Mint Theater Company does very, very well: digs up an old play, one you probably never heard of, by a playwright you never heard of, and brings it to vibrant and arresting life. Such is the case with Phyl, Cicely Hamilton’s 1913 drama. A controversial, even shocking work at the time, it’s inevitably milder now, well-wrought as it is. But with Phyl, and this isn’t always true of once-notorious plays, you can see what the fuss was about.
Interesting woman, this Hamilton. Born in London in 1872, she was a feminist long before the term was coined, and a rabble-rouser from the get-go. A suffragist, she maintained that it wasn’t so much the women’s vote she was after, but ending the entire assigned wife-mother-caretaker role assigned to womanhood at birth, and the degree to which anyone’s fate was determined by her economic status: If you can’t be financially independent, better marry in haste. A teacher, journalist, novelist, political commentator, and writer of hoary one-acts, she really hit her stride with her 1909 stage comedy Diana of Dobson, and thence became a busy playwright, always scribing on the unfairness of gender roles.
Which provides a handy context for Phyl. In a stately upper-class household, Phyllis (Lily Ganser) is governess to two exceptionally bratty and mischievous adolescents (Tessa Blimes and Charlotte Van Ledtje), whose mother, Mrs. Ponsonby (Katie Firth), is so rigid and judgmental that you can see why her daughters would want to rebel. Phyl’s drudgery, and she feels it acutely, is temporarily interrupted by a surprise visit from her older sister (Jennifer Blood), who raised her from childhood and supported Phyl by toiling at an excruciating office job. Phyl sees herself as doomed to a similarly narrow, unexciting existence, a vision fortunately compromised with the appearance of Jack (Anthony Michael Martinez), a wealthy gadabout who’s drawn to Phyl, whatever her lowly social status. The two flirt, and when Jack proposes that they run off to the Riviera, unwedded, she mulls it over for three pages or so, consents, and Act One curtain.
Scandalous! But not as shocking as Act Two, which finds the pair in a grand salon in Menton, on the French Riviera, in unmarried bliss. Phyl never knew she could be this happy, or happy at all, and a chance encounter with the vacationing Ponsonbys (true to this playwrighting period, the timely coincidences in the plotting do pile up) does little to spoil her mood. She has fine clothes, fine jewels, fine views of the Mediterranean, and, it would appear, fine sex. Another unexpected appearance, from her sister, finds the latter shocked and distraught by Phyl’s fallen-woman state, but the alternative–go back to London, live with her, face further drudgery and poverty–is a no-go. Then there’s another surprise visitor, Jack’s worried-looking financial advisor (Curzon Dobell), and we know where that’s headed.
Yes, it’s an early-20th-century well-made play, and hence corseted into conventional format, plotting, and resolution. And Hamilton has to move her chess pieces very carefully to arrive at a happy ending, albeit an emotionally rewarding one (I even got a little misty). But her notion that, given the options of poverty and dreary respectability on the one hand or decadence and joy on the other, one might do well to choose the latter, must have raised a lot of respectable eyebrows back when. It still reverberates, and Hamilton craftily wins us to Phyl’s side, endowing her with more liveliness and emotion than anyone around her. Jack, too, is gallantly written, quick with a quip or astute observation, and Martinez fills his shoes quite dashingly.
There’s one word for Ganser’s Phyl, and that’s wonderful. A recruit from the Broadway rendition of Stereophonic, she’s making her off-Broadway debut here, and she judges her every move and inflection with charm and precision. There’s something modern about her delivery; she’s conversational instead of stentorian, she doesn’t sound like 1913. But all that does is make Phyl’s plight feel more relevant and affecting. Both are well backed by Firth’s hissable matron, Blood’s weary sibling, and Blimes’s and Van Ledtje’s insufferable ruffians. Britt Berke’s direction, aside from favoring stage right a little much (I was sitting far left), keeps the action swift and clear.
I didn’t care for Brittany Vasta’s set; red lightbulbs in a fireplace just won’t do, and that Riviera retreat could be more sumptuous. Alicia J. Austin’s costumes are mostly period-accurate and attractive, though that one dress Jack buys a grateful Phyl isn’t quite the knockout the script makes it out to be. Mary Louise Geiger’s lighting turns odd shades for a Riviera sunset, but the first act, in that dark classroom, cleverly illustrates the pallor of Phyl’s existence. And Jane Shaw’s sound design, particularly those crashing waves and passing gulls, is excellent. Note: All women!
They have an easier time of making their mark in the world than Phyl did, though they’re probably still bumping up against a bro culture that favors guy sound people, guy set designers, etc. Hamilton would applaud them, delighted to see women forging into professions and identities denied them in her time. So, with this finely performed and consistently rewarding Phyl, should we.