AN "UPSTAIRS-DOWNSTAIRS" LIASON AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS

BY HENRY EDWARDS

Allan Monkhouse’s 1911 social comedy, “Mary Broome,“ unseen in New York since 1919(!) and currently being revived by the admirable Mint Theater Company, shines a light on the Edwardian era unlike that of the long summer afternoons, garden parties, and belief the sun will never set on the British Empire that characterize "Downton Abbey."

Nor does it bring to mind plays like George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman” and “Major Barbara,” which utilized the stage as a witty and iconoclastic forum in which to debate the issues of the Edwardian day.

Unlike Shaw and his playwriting colleagues Harley Granville-Barker, John Galsworthy, J.M. Barrie and Somerset Maugham, Monkhouse was not based in London and made his home in Manchester.

The writer belonged to the Manchester School whose plays portrayed middle-class life in Edwardian northern England and explored the tumult of social change.

“Mary Broome” satirizes the values of one of those middle-class Manchester families, the Timbrells, ruled over by pompous, bullying businessman Edward Timbrell (Graeme Malcolm).

Timbrell has two sons, Edgar (Rod Brogan), an utterly conventional chap, and Leonard (Roderick Hill), an arrogant and selfish piece of work who is supported by his father in order to keep him away from the family firm.

In a reflection of the pretensions of Oscar Wilde's Aesthetic Movement, Leonard fancies himself a writer but refuses to demean himself by writing for money.  Addicted to placing his alleged superiority on display at every opportunity, he bombards his family with ugly truths about their moral values, materialism and narrow-mindedness.

Leonard has also impregnated family maid, Mary  Broome (Janie Brookshire), a sweet, simple, uneducated young woman with a strong sense of right and wrong who has trouble understanding what Leonard is talking about.

While Leonard's response is to refuse to take the slightest responsibility and to run away, Mary's pregnancy inspires Timbrell to offer his son 300 pounds a year in return for marrying the maid. 

The gesture may look like Christian charity, and it may very well have been a way of keeping the provocateur away from company matters where he is sure to create havoc.

At the same time, Monkhouse's audiences instinctively knew housemaids were often were treated as playthings by their employers, and that pregnant maids were not uncommon. Many went on to give birth in secret with the babies left to die or farmed out to often less than adequate homes, while others married a lower-class man who was paid an incentive to relieve the employing family of embarrassment. 

In a reality dominated by the class system where wealth was the only thing that counted and a poor woman was automatically regarded as sub-human, the one thing that was certain was that the father of an unborn child never married the maid.

Thus Timbrell may in actuality have been punishing his spoiled son by forcing him to marry beneath his class.  

Not only is the marriage doomed, but Leonard also proves so annoying to his father he is cut off entirely.  Incapable of earning a living and dedicated solely to his pleasure, he goes off on a holiday while Mary copes with a sick baby and lacks the money for a doctor or food for the infant or herself.

The disastrous result leads Mary to conclude that her husband will never behave responsibly, and that she must defy conventional morality in order to tend for herself. It's a decision that sends shock waves through Leonard and his family who view the fact that a maid refuses to will play by the rules as the ultimate cardinal sin.

"Mary Broome" and its mix of comedy, melodrama and social satire is a tricky play, and ttrue to the Mint's mandate, director Jonathan Bank has made the rational choice of letting it speak for itself, essentially staging it conversationally and without a distinct point of view.

That appoach allows Roderick Hill and Janie Brookshire to deliver clearheaded, coherent peformances with Rod Brogan, Kristin Griffith, Douglas Rees and Jill Tanner offering colorful support.

Nevertheless, by allowing audiences to determine their response to the play's shallow central character and without offering any directorial clues to guide them, this "Mary Broome" ultimately does seem a little too mild mannered for its own good.

 "Mary Broome” runs at The Mint Theater through October 18 {www.minttheater.org).