The Fatal Weakness

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Kristin Griffith and Victoria Mack

in a scene from The Fatal Weakness

(Photo credit: Richard Termine)

 

Having had a big success last year with a revival of George Kelly’s rarely seen Philip Goes Forth, the Mint Theater Company has followed it up with Jesse Marchese’s production of Kelly’s last play, the 1946 The Fatal Weakness. Like Kelly’s biggest successes (The Torch-Bearers, The Show-Off and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Craig’s Wife),
The Fatal Weakness is a brilliant character study. Unlike those plays, it satirizes marriage, infidelity and divorce which was probably taboo in the late forties and may account for its initial lack of success. While this drawing room comedy on serious subjects is rather schematic in plot, Marchese’s polished and fast-paced direction as well as the superb central performance by Kristin Griffith gives the production that high sheen that it is intended to have.

 

The title refers to the fact that the play’s heroine is an incurable romantic, so much so that she attends weddings of complete strangers she has only read about in the society columns. When Ollie Espenshade receives an anonymous letter telling her that Paul, her husband of 28 years, has long been engaged in an affair with a woman osteopath, she at first is shocked. Then she realizes that she has seen signs of his unusual behavior over the last six months: his continually looking in the mirror to check his receding hair line, his whistling and his periodically giving a little skip. Aware that Paul has taken her for granted for years, she is not as surprised as she expected to be. However, her friend and confidante Mrs. Mabel Wentz warns her that she must have absolute proof and a witness before making any long-term decisions, and helps her to spy on her husband in order to get the evidence.

 

Ironically, her only daughter Penny, married four years, is having trouble with her old-fashioned husband Vernon. After yet another fight between them, Vernon has moved to his club for the third time, and as he confides to Ollie, this time he is not coming home until he has the assurance of certain changes. Penny has always advocated realizing one’s self (a concept she had early acquired from her father) even at the expense of her marriage and her two-year-old son. What Penny doesn’t know is that her mother is entirely on the side of her aggrieved husband – and throwing her ideas back in her face, her mother reminds her that if she can realize herself, then Vernon should have the same rights.

 

 

Cliff Bemis and Cynthia Darlow

in a scene from The Fatal Weakness

(Photo credit: Richard Termine)

 

Although Kelly lets his story play itself out, The Fatal Weakness has several surprises up its sleeve and does not have the easy answers that one expects from comedies of its period. However, one of the problems with the play is Ollie’s inconsistency. While she is romantic enough to forward her husband’s relationship with the “poor little doctor,” she tells her son-in-law that “Women don’t seriously want to see their marriages break up.” And while she accuses her daughter of wanting to appear “very emancipated,” Ollie appears to be looking forward to ending her own marriage which has gone stale. Ollie’s fatal weakness only seems to go so far in explaining her behavior. Nevertheless, Marchese’s elegant and well-paced production and the outstanding cast make the play look and sound even better than it probably is.

 

While Ollie may not be totally consistent at all times, such people exist in the world and Griffith gives a many layered performance in this star role which has her onstage almost throughout the play. Her imperturbable composure as well as her sentimentality (towards lovers and the trappings of love) is a pleasure to behold. She has been marvelously assisted by a series of outfits by costume designer Andrea Varga whose progressive color changes reveal the awakening woman. Griffith’s demeanor can be as witty and sophisticated as she needs to be as well as innocent and helpless. Watch how she pretends not to be in the know in order to find out what she is seeking from her various visitors, but she can be as sharp as a tack when she wishes. She puts you in mind of those 1940’s roles fought over by Hollywood’s leading ladies (Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Miriam Hopkins, etc.) who would have given their eye teeth to play Ollie. It is rather surprising that Hollywood did not make a film version of this property unless its advanced ideas made it too controversial.

 

 

Kristin Griffith as she appears

as Ollie Espenshade in a scene

from the Mint Theater’s revival

of George Kelly’s The Fatal Weakness

 

The other actresses surrounding Griffith are particularly fine and make the most of their clever lines. Cynthia Darlow who seems to be enjoying herself enormously as her waspish and cynical friend Mabel who seems to know all the schemes of married men, from personal experience or from observation we are never told, gives a vivid portrait of this wily woman ready to expose hypocrisy. As her wry and skeptical maid Anna, Patricia Kilgarriff makes the most of her few appearances with both her body language and tone of voice. Discussing the ceremony that Ollie has just witnessed at St. Stephen’s Church, she says pointedly, “I always thought weddings were sad – especially when you know the way the majority of them are going to turn out.” Victoria Mack isn’t afraid to make Penny as arrogant and obnoxious as the author intends her to be. Her sense of entitlement and lack of moral responsibility are among the many elements that make the play seem extremely modern while espousing traditional values, a particularly George Kelly quality.

 

While the men in the play get the short end of the stick, their roles are also somewhat underwritten. We don’t learn as much as we might about them as it is all seen from the women’s point of view. As Paul Espenshade, Cliff Bemis is appropriately bland and genial as the cheating husband believing that he has effectively covered up his long-running affair. Sean Patrick Hopkins is extremely sympathetic in his one scene as Vernon, Penny’s much neglected husband, though he does not seem very dynamic man married to this progressive woman. The play takes place in Vicki R. Davis’ well-appointed and mirrored sitting room which seems to be a metaphor for the play. It is filled with prop designer Joshua Yocom’s appropriate detritus of 28 years of marriage. The room is bathed in a soft light by designer Christian DeAngelis. Sound designer Jane Shaw has included period songs before each act that ironically comment on the action. All of Varga’s costumes are redolent of the 1940’s but also attractive in themselves.

 

Not only has George Kelly’s The Fatal Weakness been given a meticulous revival in Jesse Marchese’s graceful production, but the play airs some controversial attitudes about love, marriage, infidelity and divorce that make it more than just a revival of a 1946 drawing room comedy. The Mint Theater has done itself proud once again with a worthy revival of a previously lost play.

 

The Fatal Weakness (through October 26, 2014)

Mint Theater, 311 W. 43^rd Street, third floor, in Manhattan

For tickets call 866-811-4111 or visit http://www.minttheater.org

Running time: two hours and 45 minutes with two intermissions