The Arts in New York City

            The Torchbearers (1923), The Show-Off (1924), and Craig’s Wife (1925) were the three plays George Kelly wrote during his rise to fame on the Broadway stage. During that decade, there wasn’t a month when a George Kelly play wasn’t either being performed or on the verge of premiering. This reputation, unfortunately, was difficult to sustain. After a harsh critique of Philip Goes Forth (1931) from Brooks Atkinson, a critic for the New York Times, Kelly produced two more Broadway plays. Neither attained the level of popularity his first three plays achieved and Kelly, ultimately, forwent writing Broadway plays altogether. Now, the Mint Theatre attempts to revive the forgotten play Philip Goes Forth in a vibrant production that breathes life into Kelly’s rational and moralistic bent with delightful, over-the-top characters, close to choreographic staging, and fantastic scenery design.

The play follows Philip Eldridge (Bernardo Cubria), the protagonist who recently graduated from college in the middle of the Great Depression. He is expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, trained to take his father’s place as head of the family insurance company. Unfortunately for Mr. Eldridge (Cliff Bemis), Philip’s father, Philip does not wish to do business. He fantasizes of pursuing a dream that can only be achieved in New York City – playwriting. Naturally, all the auxiliary characters fall into two categories: those for Philips decision and those against. However, this predictable development allows the audience to be, more or less, ambivalent towards Philips decision because we are able to see both sides of the argument.

The strongest aspect of the play, however, was not the predictable plot but rather the actors. The most over-the-top characters sporadically brought humor and vitality to the performance through their contrasting personalities, all the while tiptoeing just around the boundaries of dullness: Mr. Shronk (Teddy Bergman), Philip’s oddball, hip-before-his-time friend from college who inspired Philip to go into playwriting; Mrs. Oliver (Carole Healey), a flamboyant widow who brings colorful vivacity to anything and everything that may or may not necessitate an opinion; Cynthia (Natalie Khun), Mrs. Oliver’s daughter who has full confidence in Philip’s nonexistent talent as a writer; Aunt Marian (Christine Toy Johnson), Philip’s constantly worrying, affectionately protective aunt who is suspected to support Philip in all his foolish as well as sensible decisions; Miss Krail (Rachel Mouton), an aspiring poetess who can only be described by all the synonyms of quirky; Haines (Brian Keith MacDonald), a despondent Chopin pianist who believes himself too good for Broadway but still dreams of having his compositions used in the Broadway productions; and Miss Ferris (Kathryn Kates), an the landlady of the apartment Philip is residing as well as an ex-star who performed on Broadway but was cheated of all her savings by a con-artist. As commonplace as these characters may seem, the combination of their whimsicalities, idiocies, cynicalness, and false beliefs do make for a strong and interesting performance.

Supporting the stunning actors of the play was the staging and production design influenced by Director Jerry Ruiz and set designers Steven C. Kemp and Joshua Yocom. Throughout Philip Goes Forth, characters are moving in and out of two different sets: a cream-colored, uniform parlor belonging to Philip’s Aunt Marian and the robin-egg blue New York City apartment filled to the brim with clusters of books, paintings, and furniture. No conversation in the play ever lasts long enough for the characters to settle down on the comfy-looking couches and chairs. The characters move as if choreographed to enter the set, maneuver around the furniture, and then exit only to return and repeat the dance-like actions again. The play is driven mainly by ideas, not actions although it’s ironic how the title Philip Goes Forth is the main action in the play and the reason for the change in sets. The constant motion of the actors is quite compatible with the intricately detailed set designed by Kemp and Yocom. It makes good use of the Mint Theatre’s tight space and gives more substance to Kelly’s play that would have otherwise been, literally, a story of a college graduate who abandons a $5 million business during the Great Depression in search for a dream he has no talent in. The personalities of the auxiliary characters as well as the intricacy of the set really shine through in the Mint Theatre’s revival of Kelly’s Phillip Goes Forth.

During Kelly’s career, Philip Goes Forth only enjoyed a run of 97 performances. It’s understandable and quite unsurprising as it was not one of Kelly’s well known or acknowledged plays compared to his earlier works – the play was not only monotonous but also anticlimactic. However, Philip’s abandoning of his aspirations to become a playwright parallels, in a sense, Kelly’s fall from fame. Philip Eldridge is a man fresh out of college who is enamored with the image of himself as a playwright. It may be a stretch, but perhaps it foreshadows Kelly’s belief in the fact that, because his first three plays were huge success, he would amount to more than just a three-hit wonder. Nonetheless, the play provides an interesting perspective on what it means and takes to become an artist, not to mention a successful one. The competent cast employed by the Mint Theatre combined with a creative team of set designers really does allow the positive aspects of Kelly’s play to shine through.