Lillian Hellman’s play Days to Come was never going to be an
easy show, but I was surprised to find it the rare Mint Theater miss. It’s not
that it is bad, it just isn’t compelling, and its one possible chance is hamstrung by
timing.
Days to Come, written and premiered in 1936, meanders
between the story of a manufacturing strike hitting a tight knit Ohio town and
a secondary story about the factory’s owner’s wife.
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| Larry Bull, Chris Henry Coffey, Ted Deasy, Rodrick Hill, Janie Brookshire |
The story of the strike revolves around the impact of the
strike on the factory owner, who loves this little town and its people. The factory
owner, Andrew Rodman (an underused Larry Bull), is a good man forced to hold
down wages which causes him great angst but it causes his co-owners, a business
friend and his sister, no angst what so ever. In fact, the co-owners force him
to hire “strikebreakers” and he is too naïve to know that this is just another
term for hired guns. The handsome young union organizer played Roderick Hill, is
under no such allusions. He tries to keep the striking workers from responding
to the threats and taunts of the strikebreakers. If they respond physically,
then the police (many of them newly deputized thugs) can arrest them and break
the strike. And while this is the main story, most of that action happens off
stage. The conflict is represented onstage by an old friend of the boss and the
new union organizer who show up to try to talk sense into the owner, versus a
stereotype of evil in the head thug (well played over the top by Dan Daily) and
the uncaring sister (Kim Martin-Cotton).
And then there is the story revolving around the wife. Julia
(Janie Brookshire) is barely a wife to the very passive Andrew – this is not
Mr. Bull’s fault, the story is written in a manner to suggest he has a great
weakness in character, manifest by the inability to inspire his wife. As in Ms.
Hellman’s play Little Foxes,
the female lead is headstrong and demanding. Here she is also an adulteress and
ungrateful, bringing downfall upon the men that she crosses paths with. But in
today’s age of #metoo, Ms. Brookshire plays her not as a narcissistic adult,
but as a sensitive, albeit emotionally adolescent girlish-woman trying to come
to grips with her feelings. I longed for a bit of 1930s Bette Davis or Joan
Crawford to crawl out and let loose that she enjoyed her life, but no such
luck. Her contemporary motivation was in stark contrast to the 1930’s attitude
of all the other players. She dumps her husband’s business partner early in the
show, but it isn’t more than a few moments before the brash handsome union
organizer shows up. What will happen?
 |
| Roderick Hill, Janie Brookshire |
Days to Come wraps up this show with an attack on the striking
workers, the end of the strike, the end of Mr. Bull’s hopes for a unified town,
the end of at least one affair and one marriage and the ambivalence of Julia
towards all of it. I was disappointed because I really do love the Mint and
look forward to everything they present. This was a rare failure, despite some
exceptional acting by Misters Bull, Hill and Daily.
Days to Come | Playwright: Lillian Hellmen | Director: J. R. Sullivan | Cast: Mary Bacon, Jane Brookshire, Larry Bull, Chris Henry Coffey, Dan Daily, Ted Deasy, Roderick Hill, Betsy Hogg, Kim Martin-Cotten, Geoffrey Allen Murhpy, Evan Zes
