| . | 03/31/2008
The Fifth Column
By: Victor Gluck
Nicole Shalhoub and Kelly AuCoin
(photo credit: Richard Termine)
In 1938 Ernest Hemingway published his only play, The Fifth Column, a story of the siege of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. In March 1940, the play was produced on Broadway by the Theatre Guild in a version entirely rewritten by Hollywood screenwriter Benjamin Glazer. So angry was Hemingway at the changes in politics, characterization, and plot developments that he refused to see Lee Strasberg’s production which ran for 87 performances. The Mint Theater Company, which specializes in rejuvenating lost plays by major authors, is offering the first professional American production of Hemingway’s original script.
Even a director as astute as Jonathan Bank has not been able to overcome the play’s problems. Written in three acts and eleven scenes, The Fifth Column has all the deficiencies of plays by novelists. The scenes are like chapters of a long novel, rather than dramatically focused episodes. The plot is leisurely and convoluted, with some of the material repeated more than once. As a war story, many of the most exciting events happen off stage, while a good deal of the historical background is assumed, and left sketchy and vague. The dialogue, which is often stilted and awkward on stage, might have been acceptable in a printed short story or novel. For the record, the title refers to a long forgotten statement of rebel leader General Mola that he had four columns attacking Madrid from the outside and a fifth column of secret sympathizers working from within the city.
Bank may have been too kind in treating the text as sacrosanct. A bit of pruning might have made the play seem less overwritten and sluggish in telling in its story. At almost three hours, the plot is too tenuous for its inordinate length. Time has also not been kind to The Fifth Column. The events of the Spanish Civil War are no longer common knowledge. For Americans, the participants and the highlights of this war are not even ancient history. Outside of Spain, it is unlikely that “The International Brigade” evokes any resonance with most people today. Hemingway was himself to write a more effective story based on his experiences in Spain in his 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was also successfully dramatized in its film version three years later.
The play’s hero, Philip Rawlings, a typical hard-drinking, hard-living Hemingway character, is an American working as a counter-espionage agent for the Republicans or Loyalists fighting to maintain the newly elected Republic against the Rebel or Fascist forces led by General Francisco Franco. Living in Madrid’s Hotel Florida, the headquarters for the international press, Rawlings uses his status as a journalist as cover for his political activities. The plot concerns Rawlings falling in love with the beautiful and glamorous Dorothy Bridges, an American journalist who hails from Vassar, as well as a dangerous mission that Rawlings must go on with his Comrade Max in the Brigade.
Although Hemingway successfully captures the mood of the besieged city with the nightly bombings striking the hotel and its environs, the politics are hazy. At one point Rawlings speaks of the Party, and at this vantage it takes quite a while to realize that he and Max are part of a Communist cell. None of the characters are sympathetic, from Rawlings’s drinking and carousing, to the superficial Dorothy who is more interested in her new fur coat than filing her story on the siege for her magazine. At the play’s writing, the International Brigade of volunteers to help the Loyalist defend their country was daily in the headlines. Seventy years later, the play’s political intrigues seem confused and poorly explained. Much of the play is a waiting game as Dorothy waits for Philip’s return, Philip’s awaiting his mission to begin, and the other characters wait for their next meal as well as the next air raid.
Part of the interest today in The Fifth Column is in the fact that Rawlings is based on Hemingway and Dorothy is a partial portrait of Martha Gellhorn, the famed war correspondent who was also at the Hotel Florida with Hemingway in 1937 and later became his third wife.
Although the published text does not describe Philip Rawlings, Kelly AuCoin seems miscast as a Hemingway hero. Small, intense and wiry, AuCoin does not suggest the archetypal Hemingway male so well known from the novels, film versions, and photographs of the author. Playing against type, AuCoin exudes courage and heroism but the bluff, blustery manner does not come easily. Heidi Armbruster is more convincing as the rich, spoiled Dorothy, but this unpleasant portrait should have been warning enough for Gellhorn to avoid falling in love with the play’s author.
Among the cast of 13 playing 22 roles, Nicole Shalhoub is excellent as the tempestuous Anita, referred to as the “Moorish tart” in the published script, and Ronald Guttman is chilling as Max, the comrade who is a refugee and victim of Hitler’s Germany. Carlos Lopez is amusing as the hotel manager always ingratiating himself with his foreign guests in the hope that he may obtain some food for his large family. Jane Shaw’s sound design effectively captures the noise of the bombs and the air raids, while Vicki R. Davis’s settings cleverly transform the small Mint stage into multiple Madrid locales with the minimum of time. The 1930’s atmosphere is helped by Clint Ramos’ many costumes as well as Erin Kennedy Lunsford’s hair and makeup design.
Jonathan Bank and the Mint Theater Company are to be congratulated for taking a risk on this literary footnote to Hemingway’s long and distinguished career. Although the play, long available from its published text but unknown on stage till now, deserves to be seen as an integral part of the Hemingway canon, The Fifth Column proves to be a minor work from its influential author.
The Fifth Column (through May 18)
Mint Theater Company, 311 W. 43rd Street, 3rd Floor, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-315-0231 or http://www.minttheater.org
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