If you’re not an aficionado of early twentieth century British drama, the name Elizabeth Baker may not ring a bell. But back in 1909, a play called Chains made the writer, who was then in her early thirties and had previously worked as a stenographer, the toast of London. At least one critic compared her to Shaw, declaring, in the publication The New Age, that Chains was “at once the most brilliant and the deepest problem play by a modern British writer that I have seen since Major Barbara.”
Baker would write other well-received plays, among them 1913’s The Price of Thomas Scott, produced three years ago by Mint Theater Company, which is now presenting the American premiere of Chains. The new production, directed by Jenn Thompson, is as robustly entertaining as you’d expect, given Mint’s history of breathing fresh life into long-neglected plays. And while you won’t leave the theater convinced that Baker’s name should be as familiar as Shaw’s—or Ibsen’s, to cite an even more seminal figure in making social consciousness theatrically compelling—you’ll likely want to dig deeper into her repertoire.
Chains is, certainly, informed by some of the same concerns expressed by these more famous playwrights, from the role of class in shaping expectations to women’s struggles for autonomy. We’re introduced to a pair of English sisters: Lily is by all indications a contented wife, to Charley, who holds a seemingly solid if unglamorous job as a city clerk. Maggie is plainly more independent-minded, yet appears poised to give up her own uninspiring work in a shop and marry Walter, a widower of considerable means.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
But when a lodger whom Lily and Charley have taken in to earn extra money announces that he’s giving up his own gig as a clerk to seek new opportunities, and adventures, in Australia, Charley finds himself contemplating the dearth of either in his own life—and how putting off marriage, as the lodger intends to, might have made a difference. Maggie, meanwhile, questions how happy she can be with a man whose steadiness bores her.
It soon becomes obvious—a little too obvious, frankly—that Maggie and Charley are the true fellow spirits, and the characters who most inspired Baker’s sympathy and admiration. To her credit, the playwright neither contrived a sexual frisson between them nor entirely ruled out the possibility that an attraction might exist, or did exist, or could develop in the future. The focus is on their individual journeys, which eventually drive both to rail against the forces holding them back.
For Maggie, played by Olivia Gilliatt with just the right mix of crisp elegance and indignation, that means lamenting both her limited options as a woman and the restrictions placed on men by sisters like, well, her sister. “They want stirring up—and it’s the women who’ve got to do the stirring,” she chides Lily. Charley has his own fiery monologue, lambasting the system that discourages chaps like him from dreaming even as it reduces their wages and mobility. “Why can’t a man have a fit of restlessness and all that,” he wonders, “without being thought a villain?”
Jeremy Beck makes such rhetorical questions bracing while also showing us Charley’s inner conflict, as a man who loves his wife and isn’t inclined to shirk responsibilities. Laakan McHardy brings similar nuance to Lily, gradually revealing the self-interest in her passive devotion, while Ned Noyes’s handsome, gracious and bloodless Walter wittily evokes a Mr. Right who isn’t quite, making a strong and frequently amusing case against marriages of convenience.
The other fine performances include Anthony Cochrane’s and Amelia White’s droll takes on Lily and Maggie’s conservative parents and Brian Owen’s zesty turn as Charley and Lily’s complacent, buffoonish neighbor, who can’t fathom the lodger’s risk-taking any more than the old folks or Lily can. Ironically, though—and by design, I’m sure—Peterson Townsend, the young actor cast as the lodger, exudes a precocious dignity that makes him seem more stable than most of the others.
The contrast between the lodger’s wanderlust (and Charley’s, and Maggie’s) and Lily’s careful domesticity is reflected in John McDermott’s fetching, meticulous set, lovingly appointed with all the items that a woman on a budget could afford. (One scene unfolds in the parents’ sitting room, also warm and neat but with less of an aspirational vibe.) Charley, notably, seems drawn to a door that looks out on the couple’s garden, as if torn between the little haven his wife has created and the natural world beyond it, with all its dangers and potential.
More than 100 years on, such struggles—and the inequality that makes them tougher for some than for others—clearly endure, and this hearty production makes them as engaging as they are accessible.
Chains opened June 23, 2022, at Theatre Row and runs through July 17. Tickets and information: minttheater.org
