AWWW, I LOVE IT WHEN MY HUSBAND PUTS THE MOVES ON THE DINNER GUEST From left, Max Von Essen, Mikaela Izquierdo and Elisabeth Gray in “Yours Unfaithfully.” The production, set and written in 1933, is streaming free at minttheater.org.
IT’S EASY TO SEE that “Yours Unfaithfully” is set in the past. While the leading man, Stephen (Max von Essen), paces the room, ranting about his father’s misguided values (Dad is soooooooo traditional), Stephen is wearing suspenders. The hemlines and silhouettes of the two women’s dinner-party dresses suggest the 1930s. But all doubt is erased when Anne (Elisabeth Gray) speaks to her husband: “Stephen, darling, I should simmer down now if I were you.”
Yes, clearly we are in the English countryside between the wars. Miles Malleson wrote this four-act play in 1933, when Hitler was moving up from chancellor to dictator, American prohibition was mercifully ending, and nice middle-class people spoke carefully and grammatically.
“Yours Unfaithfully” was never produced in Malleson’s lifetime (1888-1969), perhaps because the premise was so shocking and a little too close to his own life. Stephen and Anne — he’s an author with writer’s block; she’s reinventing modern education — have been married for eight years and decided ages ago that extramarital affairs would be good for their relationship, not the end of it.
So in Act I, when Anne comes back into the sitting room from the garden and finds Stephen in the arms of Diana (Mikaela Izquierdo), their recently widowed, slightly depressed dinner guest, she approves. Anne even goes over to tell Diana so (“I shouldn’t mind anything — with you”) and later says good night to her husband with a fond observation (“Isn’t Diana lovely?”).
Well, good for Anne, I guess. Personally, I’d be a little suspicious of any woman who’d turn up at her married friends’ house in a much-too-dressy dress, with a spaghetti-thin halter top, leaving all of her arms and most of her back exposed. I don’t care if she did just buy it in Paris. (Costume design by Hunter Kaczorowski.)
A SHOULDER (OR KNEE) TO LEAN ON Gray with Todd Cerveris in Act II, She needs someone to talk to about an emotion she’s surprised to feel: jealousy.
An affair between Stephen and Diana ensues, and things do not go smoothly emotionally for anyone. Although Stephen — whom Anne describes as having been “as innocent as a new-laid egg” in his youth — seems pretty giddy for a while.
The Mint Theater Company specializes in bringing back lost or, as The Wall Street Journal once said, “unjustly forgotten” scripts from decades past, so when “Yours Unfaithfully” actually had a world premiere, it was held by the Mint in December 2016 at the Beckett Theater, part of the Theater Row complex on 42nd Street. With this very cast.
Now, with New York theater shut down for just over a year, Mint is streaming the play — not an actors-in-boxes Zoom special, but a filmed version done at the Beckett. It has real sets (the house in the country for the first two acts, then Stephen and Anne’s London bed-sit), three cameras and real blocking.
Malleson, who was an actor and a screenwriter as well as a playwright, was a straightforward storyteller. Most of the time, characters tell one another exactly what they mean, which is both enlightening and unlikely.
The supporting characters are Alan (Todd Cerveris), a married doctor, with whom Anne shares her distress. The two also have their own back story, which is convenient. Stephen’s moral, old-fashioned father (Stephen Schnetzer) appears to be a priest (is that a white collar or just a white woolen scarf around his neck — or both?) and identifies himself as a parson. Alan addresses him as Padre.
FATHER AND SON Stephen (von Essen) almost never agrees with his conservative father (Stephen Schnetzer).
Schnetzer and von Essen also look around the same age on camera, which is a little distracting — but research shows that Mr. Schnetzer is actually 26 years older.
Back here in real life, in the 1970s, two married doctors published a book called “Open Marriage,” and a nation of 20-something baby boomers bought it, marveling, “This is such a brilliant, brand-new idea, which nobody in history has ever thought of before. We are so smart. And free.” They should have checked on Malleson’s theories. And come to think of it, the play’s ending is pretty shocking.
When Alexis Soloski reviewed the Theater Row staging for The New York Times, she called the play “a refined, rueful and often shrewd comedy,” declaring it “both a daring play and a highly conventional one.”
“The arguments remain provocative while its structure feels familiar, its tone decorous,” she added. Nothing wrong with that. She made it a Critic’s Choice.
“Yours Unfaithfully,” by Miles Malleson, directed by Jonathan Bank. Mint Theater Company, Silver Lining Streaming Series, minttheater.org. March 22, 2021 - May 16, 2021. Running time: Under 2 hours.
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