Nick Cordileone, Eric Martin Brown and Julia Coffey
(Photo credit: Richard Termine)
Although it has taken 105 years for D.H. Lawrence’s tragedy, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd, to have its New York premiere, it has been worth the wait. It also proves undoubtedly that Lawrence, best known as a novelist, was a major playwright. It is not surprising that the superb production of this naturalistic drama should be the work of the Mint Theater Company whose mission is to unearth neglected plays of high literary quality and whose productions have all been of a high caliber. Stuart Howard directs an excellent cast in this powerful play, with Julia Coffey giving a particularly moving performance in the title role.
The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd follows the Mint’s 2003 New York premiere of Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law, which along with A Collier’s Friday Night is now classified as a trilogy of Lawrence plays about the difficult lives of British coal miners and their families in the English Midlands at the turn of the last century. The plays are extremely well observed as Lawrence grew up in this milieu, and Mrs. Holroyd’s situation is based on his Aunt Polly whose husband was killed in a coal mining accident when he was 29. The plot of The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd is an expansion of his short story, “An Odour of Chrysanthemums,” and the relationship of Lizzie and Charlie Holroyd is actually based on that of Lawrence’s parents, the mismatched marriage of the educated lady and the working man. This material is more familiar as the background to his first great novel, Sons and Lovers.
Set in Bestwood, (based on Lawrence’s hometown of Eastwood), outside of Nottingham, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd is as naturalistic as anything that Emile Zola ever wrote and is a precursor to the kitchen sink dramas that would not become popular in England until more than 40 years after this play was written. Housewife Lizzie Holroyd, an obviously educated woman, feels trapped in her marriage to Charles Holroyd, a coal miner who would rather drink with his buddies in the pub than stay at home. The play covers a two-day period that dramatizes everything we need to know about the Holroyds’ life and marriage.
Marion Williams’ setting brilliantly depicts the stifling environment in which Mrs. Holroyd lives: her very sparsely furnished kitchen on a raised platform is surrounded by paths of inky black coal on all four sides. The blank walls of the neighborhood houses (which create a claustrophobic feeling) are coal black, with entry ways that resemble the low corridors of the tunnels in which the coal miners work. Jeff Nellis’ dim, moody lighting suggests that the kitchen is lit by the one oil lamp visible. The drab costumes by Martha Hally reflect these lives of quiet desperation.
The first act establishes that the overworked Mrs. Holroyd has an affectionate follower in Blackmore, a sensitive, gentlemanly electrician who works at the same coal mine as her husband. He is even attentive to her two children, Jack and Minnie. When Holroyd returns home drunk along with two ladies he has met at the pub, Mrs. Holroyd has just about had it, and is willing to consider Blackmore’s offer to elope with her and the children. However, fate has a way of stepping in and changing the course of one’s life, and, as the title reveals, Holroyd meets with an accident. The play’s final scene has a coup de theatre that only a master playwright could have created.
In this play, only the second of Lawrence’s eight full length plays, he reveals the entire arc of the Holroyd’s relationship: the passion they felt in the beginning, the deterioration of the relationship as they have disappointed each other, the loathing they have come to feel for each other at present, and Mrs. Holroyd’s regret and guilt at its conclusion. Coffey is able to embody all of Lizzie Holroyd’s aspirations, regrets and anger as she irons and cleans up after her husband and her young children. She is all fire and backbone. As her disapproving mother-in-law, Randy Danson who is only seen in the last act is formidable as the voice of experience who rightly predicts the outcome.
Nick Cordileone is both endearing and tender as the loyal swain, obviously a cut above the usual workers in the coal pits. As Charles Holroyd, Eric Martin Brown fits the bill as the tall, handsome, embittered coal miner who has not lived up to his wife’s expectations. Pilar Witherspoon and Sheila Stasack offer needed comic relief as the two “ladies” who make the drunken visit to Holroyd’s silent but horrified wife. James Warke and Allyn Burrows give strong support as other employees of the coal mine who stop in to give Mrs. Holroyd news of her husband.
Alternating in the roles of the two children Minnie and Jack, Emma Kantor and Lance Chantiles-Wertz (seen at the press preview) are very believable, particularly Chantiles-Wertz who has his own withering scorn for the drunken outbursts of the father. If the production has any defect, it is that the accents are very variable from actor to actor and that not all of the characters meant to be native to Bestwood have enough of the Notts-Derby dialect. However, this may be intentional for an audience unfamiliar with Midlands speech.
The linear structure of D.H. Lawrence’s tragedy moves inexorably to its inevitable conclusion in its stark setting. Seeing the play now, it becomes perfectly obvious why it was not acceptable in its own time. From the evidence of the Shaw, Barrie and Granville Barker plays we have seen, Edwardian theater-going audiences expected educated, upper class characters who peopled elegant drawing rooms. With its pessimistic view of life, The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd was too big a dose of reality for that hothouse world. In 2009, Lawrence’s tragedy has lost none of its power as demonstrated by Stuart Howard’s skillful and engrossing production.
through April 5)
Mint Theater, 311 W. 43rd Street, 3rd Floor, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-315-0231 or http://www.minttheater.org