The Mint Theater, per its mission statement, finds and produces “worthwhile plays from the past that have been lost of forgotten.” This they do well, with often illuminating and always interesting results.
A case in point: The Daughter-in-Law. Novelist D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) wrote his first play in 1912 or so, finishing it (or, at least, shelving it) just before the 1913 publication of his masterwork novel Sons and Lovers. The play went unproduced, unpublished, unread, and forgotten until it was pulled from typically dusty archives by the folks at London’s Royal Court in 1967. The Mint brought the play stateside in 2003 with an acclaimed production directed by Martin Platt. This production, now being revived at City Center Stage II, continues to fulfill the Mint mission and does so admirably.
That said, The Daughter-in-Law is what we might call a problem play, with problems on several levels. Lawrence was addressing issues of class inequity, which were emerging in the first decade of the 20th century; women’s rights in the home, ditto; and that age-old silver cord binding sons and mothers to the detriment of any wives/lovers who happen to come between them. The author was the son of a dirt-poor miner and a woman who “married beneath her.” Like the 25-year-old Luther in The Daughter-in-Law, and for that matter like Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers, Lawrence’s first significant romance was subverted by his clinging mum.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
The play is set in coal country, specifically Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire. The Mint production goes out of its way to replicate the dialect in which Lawrence wrote the dialogue. It is impossible for a current-day New Yorker to say how close this replication is; we can say, though, that it sure sounds foreign. To the extent that a fair amount is either linguistically obscure or plain unintelligible. Not detrimentally so, mind you; the gist gets through. But viewers who are sticklers for understanding every sentence will find parts of the play rushing by while they try to keep up.
The production, as opposed to the play, is admirable. The actors handle their chores well. Sandra Shipley (as the mother) and Amy Blackman (as the daughter) make worthy protagonists, and their interchanges—when they eventually meet in the final two scenes—crackle with antagonistic energy. Ciaran Bowling (as the younger brother) also does well, even in the scene where Lawrence has him confess that his sister-in-law’s attack on mom’s emotional strangulation of her sons is on the mark: “Nay mother—tha knows it’s right. Tha knows tha’s got me—an’ ’ll ha’e me till ter dies—an’ after that—yi!” What’s a modern-day actor to make of that speech, anyway?
Polly McKie admirably keeps her character—a meek neighbor-woman pragmatically dealing with the pregnancy of her unwed daughter—from the borders of cliché. One wonders, though, at the handling of the married son, “our Luther,” by actor Tom Coiner and director Platt. The miner enters with a face full of pit-dirt so thick that the character never quite comes through. “A bit o’ dirt’s like a veil on my face—I shine through th’andsomer,” says he. But Coiner’s Luther never does shine through. Might the play have more impact with a more impactful performance in the central role?
I did not see the Mint’s initial production of this play; yet as I sat there I felt like I had seen it, several times. Some of the familiarity stems from the fact that I read Sons and Lovers about five years ago. But while The Daughter-in-Law was likely provocative when Lawrence filed it away in 1913—or would have been, had anyone seen it—the controversial issues addressed have been visited so many times that they are now the stuff of sitcoms. And yes, some of the melodramatic reveals in the latter scenes of The Daughter-in-Law elicited guffaws, at least at the performance attended.
Part of the issue comes from the multiple “problems” addressed. It is not until midway through that we realize that what Lawrence really intends to tackle is the Oedipus complex that Dr. Freud had, at the time, only recently introduced. Which is handled in defter manner by Sidney Howard in the 1926 The Silver Cord, a far superior play (coming from the 1925 Pulitzer-winner) than novelist Lawrence’s first attempt at the dramatic art.
There is an inherent problem in “rescuing” lost works by great writers. Was The Daughter-in-Law ever finished? Could it be that Lawrence—while trying to find a publisher for Sons and Lovers, which he began writing in 1910—at some point decided to try to turn the material into a play, at least, and then shelved what he might have seen as a preliminary draft of the play once publication of the novel was secured?
This conjecture might be wildly inaccurate, yes. But Sons and Lovers is masterful. The Daughter-in-Law, despite the intelligent and helpful production lavished upon it by the Mint, remains—well—problematic.
The Daughter-in-Law opened February 22, 2022, at City Center Stage II and runs through March 20. Tickets and information: minttheater.org
