Review - D.H. Lawrence's The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd Makes a Rare Appearance at The Mint

While The Mint Theater Company built its well-earned reputation as New York's leading archivists of plays they proudly proclaim as "worthy but neglected," their latest ventures suggest they may want to consider adopting the new slogan, "I betcha didn't know (insert name of literary giant here) wrote a play."

After treating Gothamites to the dramatic efforts of Leo Tolstoy (The Power of Darkness) and Ernest Hemingway (The Fifth Column), Artistic Director Jonathan Banks and his cohorts now make a second dive into the stage works of D.H. Lawrence - having produced his The Daughter-In-Law in 2003 - with the controversial novelist's drama of a crumbling marriage, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd.

The second of his eight plays, it was written in 1910, when the author was 25, and though it was published in 1914, the drama's unconventional setting of a working class home where characters use thick Yorkshire dialects repelled producers. The only production in Lawrence's lifetime was a 1916 one-night engagement by a small Los Angeles theatre company, but now the Mint provides a handsome and beautifully acted New York debut.

The Mrs. Holroyd in question (played by Julia Coffey) is Elizabeth, the abused wife of Charles (Eric Martin Brown), a violent and hard-drinking coalminer. When the gentlemanly Blackmore (Nick Cordileone), an electrician at the mine, delivers a seriously inebriated Charles home after a night of carousing, the miner tries to attack his wife, instigating a fist-fight between the two men (very well choreographed by Michael G. Chin) that he's too soused to win. With her husband asleep, Blackmore urges Elizabeth to take her two children and run off with him to Spain, where he knows he can get work. What makes the scene between them so touching is that while Blackmore and Elizabeth know they don't love each other, they have a growing friendship that may evolve into love. As directed by Stuart Howard, the timidity with which they consider life with each other is played with lovely, honest affection by Coffey and Cordileone, tentatively paced so that their nervousness becomes very sensual.

From that point the play takes a while to reach its somewhat uncertain conclusion, with the third act (the Mint uses only one intermission) introducing Charles' mother, played with a hearty frankness by Randy Danson. But while the play itself may be lean on plot, Howard's production is rich in texture. Coffey's intelligent performance neatly lays out the internal conflict of a self-sufficient woman who nevertheless feels uncertain about breaking away from her expected role. Cordileone's Blackmore is a man determined to overcome his own limitations and even Brown manages to squeeze some sympathy out of Charles.

Set designer Marion Williams' wood and brick cottage and Martha Hally's appropriately drab period costumes communicate the weariness of Elizabeth's everyday life under Jeff Nellis' grim lighting.

Photos by Richard Termine: Top: Julia Coffey and Nick Cordileone; Bottom: Nick Cordileone, Eric Martin Brown and Julia Coffey