Mint finds a masterpiece

(photos by Maria Baranova)

There’s a great, new George Bernard Shaw play playing at the Mint on Theater Row. A mining endeavor as much as a theater company, the Mint specializes in finding overlooked, underproduced or simply lost masterpieces. They dig them up, dust them off and, sometimes, find that the glitter under the grime is pure gold. And "Garside’s Career" certainly fits the bill. It is extremely well written, presents intelligent, well-spoken women and men, a plot that is immersed in politics and philosophy, characters who are charming, well meaning and flawed, witty yet eminently human with true emotions. And love, felt and flawed, litters the stage, even if somehow it seems to interfere with life. Cupid’s arrows, in every Shaw play, seem to cause as much pain as pleasure. But in "Garside’s Career," we get what could easily be said to be one of the best plays in Shaw’s career with endearing characters, the author’s gentle hand ever so subtly visible as men go astray and woman get empowered, even if the show ends with a slightly sentimental, happy ending. Lovers of Shaw shouldn’t miss this Shaw masterpiece that the Mint has somehow managed to mine from the depths of history with only one important disclosure: GBS didn’t write this masterpiece.

The fact that George Bernard Shaw did not write "Garside’s Career," obviously, is significant, but this play is as well crafted an example of Shaw’s well made play as I have ever seen.  "Garside’s Career" is a beautifully written, witty, heartfelt, hopeful play about a man who rises in politics, even if in the process he discards love, only to turn into the person and thing he detests, before rediscovering his soul and the value of love. Written by Harold Brighouse, it is at least as good as most of Shaw’s plays and better than most.  The Mint quotes the Guardian as saying that Brighouse is “one of prewar Northern England’s most respected but neglected playwrights.” After a certain amount of time, an old play either becomes outdated or new again. A well made play, it displays a sturdy structure, a good heart, a well meaning man who goes astray and all of this against the backdrop of politics, with ideas, intelligence, emotion and love. If you love Shaw, you will love Brighouse. And the Mint in its mining truly has found gold, and not fool’s gold, but the real thing in this play, production and cast. Now and then, plays written a century ago truly do feel timely, a tribute to the timeliness of good writing and understanding of character and the reluctance of human nature to change despite best efforts to do so.

Many theaters have a formula, or at least a pattern. And Mint’s, if you can call it that, is pairing extremely good actors, often in roles with accents, with older, often overlooked scripts. Daniel Marconi as Peter, the engineer who runs for office, is charming, earnest, eager and a well meaning underdog. We seems a little bit of a lapdog, panting for his true love, but he also has a little bit of the leader in him. He is an everyman, someone we can root for. Madeline Seidman as Margaret Shawcross, a humble teacher who loves and is loved by Peter, is serious, stubborn and so much more mature than her beau. She sees how Marconi pines for the spotlight, seeking to advance himself, while she understands that politics is about the people, not the person involved with it.  Sara Haider plays a more sophisticated, beautifully dressed incarnation of femininity, someone even a statue could fall in love with. Garside sees her in a crowd, and feels inspired by her, but she is with the wrong “gang” or party, a kind of enemy as well as the envy of other women and the object of affection for men. Matt Dickson’s direction is fluid, keeping the characters in a constant merry go round, moving forward and around each other. Marconi is nothing if not sincere, even when he becomes sidetracked by success. It’s as if the moral stance of this play is that love is superior to success. Rank brings us reputation, but romance brings us happiness.

We meet Marconi’s Garside at a point in his life when he is courting a career and Madeline Seidman’s Margaret Shawcross, planning to speak to crowds and succeed. He pines for the spotlight, somewhat disingenuously insisting it is only to get Margaret the wealth she deserves. In reality, Margaret wants love more than money. Seidman as Shawcross tells us she is tired of windbags who trade deeds for words, a chance to improve society for success. Amelia White, as Peter’s mother, says she is standing in the way of success, when she really understands that success is not the path to happiness. When Peter is offered a change at political office, to advance himself, he takes it, even though the woman he loves, rooted in reality, sees only risk and realizes it will ruin him, which turns out to be right. Throughout the play, we see Garside work with Margaret, since they are truly kindred souls. But he falls prey to the lure of London and the big city, falling in love with Sara Haider as Gladys Mottram, a stunningly beautiful woman who is beautifully dressed, a trophy wife in waiting, who espouses very different beliefs. Garside goes from the working man’s hope to a would be wealthy man measuring success by money.

“I’m a professional advocate,” Marconi as Garside says with his hallmark earnestness at one point, but, of course, he has become an advocate for himself.

When he tries to shack up with Haider’s Motram during a major vote, we realize that he has chosen his career over his cause, or rather his own lust over bettering others’ lives. He was elected to represent the people, including a few working men who arrive and say he works for them. But he tells them, of course, that he knows best. In truly Shavian style, Garside is brought down by the beautiful woman he is hiding in his house at a moment when he should be voting on a major issue. He has to choose between the beauty of a woman and the beauty of duty and we don’t have to think long to figure out which he picks.

“The truth is a diamond with many facets,” we hear Haider say, but in the end the truth is that we are all human.

Just as in Shaw, our humanity at once makes us noble and leads to our downfall. Garside has turned into a “human Gramophone,”  someone without soul, mechanical rather than moral, whose speeches are all sound and no soul. He lost his heart when he left his love, losing part of himself too, including the sense of where he is from. It’s as if the author is telling us that if a man cannot love one woman he cannot love anyone or anything beyond himself. Garside starts being sincere, and ends being self-serving, ruined by success, only to be chastened by defeat that brings him to his knees, where he finds happiness with a woman. The morality here is one where love is what makes us happy, while success just makes us capitalists. Objects are ordinary. The bond between human beings is what makes us extraordinary. We need to be true to our ideas, our ideals and our loves. Success separates us from all of these. Garside’s career, really, is a red herring. London is a place full of strivers, people seeking to triumph, while life is really about being good to one another. This play is about Garside’s character and how his career gets in the way. And in the end it is about how finding love is, as he knows from the start, what makes him whole.

Garside tells us at one point that mediocrity is the “motto” for so many people. But the saddest thing is that this wonderful orator, this great hope of the unwashed, sells his soul. The play, however, is anything but mediocre. In the process of rising above others, Garside becomes mediocre.

When we surrender our higher aspirations for personal ambition, we become just another self-serving somebody. A gifted man, he squanders his gifts, to benefit himself. The very men who enlisted him to run for office return to get him to resign, after he forgets that government is not about the rank you reach, but what you do with it. Garside’s career takes him away from a teacher, connected to people, as he rises to climb his “Everest,” without realizing that enjoyment is never about climbing an Everest, but everywhere around him. Like any good Shaw play, Garside’s Career shows us the war between men and women on the battlefield of live. Garside delivers a larger than life speech on the terrace of the opposition. But in the process of rising, he loses what matters most, and that is his soul, his love and his heart.  But in the process of watching this, we see a wonderful, beautiful play about how success in love, loving one person and being loved, is the true success.

The Mint in the process has scored a huge success. Mining the pages of history is risky business, but now and then it’s possible to find gold. Every Mint production has a good cast and production, but "Garside’s Career" also has a great script. If there is justice, which I sometimes doubt, this production should be the beginning of a new career for this play that shows no signs of dust, but gives us lots of great dialogue, making it a real find for the theater and the audiences who have the pleasure of seeing the show come alive.