A frivolous aristocrat eventually finds her affections torn between a conservative and a liberal who oppose each during an election in Conflict, yet another absorbing play from long ago that the Mint Theater Company currently restores to the stage.
Cultivating new plays and writers is essential to the theater’s future, of course, but the Mint’s artistic mission to reclaim worthy yet forgotten plays from the past is equally important. The company’s producing artistic director, Jonathan Bank, is a canny cultural truffle hunter who has unearthed any number of admirable vintage plays, of which Conflict is the latest find.
Staged in London in 1925 but apparently never presented in New York until now, Conflict was composed by Miles Malleson, a British writer-actor whom vintage film buffs may recall for his turns as Reverend Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) or the poetry-quoting hangman in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Malleson’s previously unproduced 1933 study of an open marriage, Yours Unfaithfully, was premiered by the Mint last year.
Conflict thoughtfully observes the difference in social values held by the advocates for the haves and the have-nots in England in the mid-1920s, which respectively were known as the Tory and Labour parties. The pivotal figure at the play’s center is Lady Dare Bellingdon (Jessie Shelton), a wealthy young woman who hasn’t given these serious issues a moment’s thought. Then she meets and gradually becomes intrigued by Tom Smith (Jeremy Beck), a rising member of the Labour party who is not from her privileged “upper ten thousand” crowd.
As it turns out, Smith is running for a seat in Parliament against Sir Ronald Clive (Henry Clarke), Dare’s lover, with whom she has become rather bored. Smith’s desire to forge a better society for the masses touches a chord within Dare and she impulsively materializes late one night in his modest quarters to learn more about him and his views.
Their chaste encounter, however, eventually leads to a struggle between Dare, her reactionary father (Graeme Malcolm) and Clive, who is revealed to be a stuffed shirt. Although the outcome of the election remains open as the play ends, it is evident that Dare’s outlook and future have been forever changed.
An agreeable look at early 1920s British politics and morality filtered through a pleasant love story, Conflict receives a typically handsome and neatly acted production from the Mint in the Beckett space at Theater Row. Shelton’s bright, quicksilver presence as Dare contrasts against Beck’s earnest demeanor as Smith and Clarke’s gentlemanly Clive. Malcolm’s bewhiskered looks and crusty manner as Lord Bellingdon recalls the patrician Hollywood likes of C. Aubrey Smith. Amelia White briefly and amiably represents the unthinking proletariat as Smith’s landlady. Jasmin Walker, ever so satiny as a socialite chum of the heroine, is dressed especially nicely by Martha Hally, who provides correct period clothes for everyone. Set designer John McDermott stocks a dark-paneled study of the Bellingdon family’s London mansion with an array of Victorian furniture and objects that visually suggest the family’s conservative values.
That crucial midnight encounter between Dare and Smith, and the play’s increasingly urgent final scene are tricky to perform. Jenn Thompson, who directs the production, evidently appreciates the play’s moment-by-moment variations in tone and she stages them with confidence and sensitivity.
Conflict opened June 21, 2018 at the Beckett Theatre and runs through July 21. Tickets and information: minttheater.org
