An “un-romantic comedy” about the price of free love, YOURS UNFAITHFULLY is an insightful, intelligent and exceptionally intimate peek behind the closed doors of an open marriage. Stephen and Anne, blissfully happy for eight years, are committed to living up to their ideals. When Stephen, a writer who isn’t writing, begins to sink into a funk of unproductive moodiness, Anne encourages him to seek out a fresh spark. Can their marriage survive uncompromising generosity, sacrifice and love? More than the story of an unconventional couple, the play is about what happens when our ideals clash with our emotions.
Although today best remembered as a film actor, Miles Malleson wrote a dozen plays, plus numerous translations and adaptations. The most successful was THE FANATICS, which played in both London and New York in 1927. YOURS UNFAITHFULLY was published in 1933 but never produced, making Mint’s production a belated World Premiere.
Our production of YOURS UNFAITHFULLY featured Tony Nominee Max von Essen in the role of Stephen and was selected as a New York Times Critics’ Pick. “A refined, rueful and often shrewd comedy about polyamory, written decades before open relationships were quite so openly discussed,” wrote Alexis Soloski about the play. “It’s a bit like a sex farce with real sorrow instead of slammed doors, and something like a drawing room comedy with moral conundrums peeking out beneath the cushions. It is often very funny; it is also very nearly a tragedy.”1 The New Yorker echoed the praise, writing, “The splendid cast of five inhabits the characters with passion and grace. In bringing neglected works to light, the Mint performs a neat trick: modern audiences experience what it must have been like to see a play in another era, when careful listening was expected—and rewarded.”2
William Miles Malleson (1888-1969)
In December of 1968, a few months before he passed away, Malleson started work on an autobiography. He described having two childhoods, one was almost absurdly idyllic: “I cannot believe there was a happier family in England, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter.” The other was spent on school holidays with his grandparents and uncle, a local vicar. All three adults were “passionately Puritanical.” Malleson recalls several interrogations about “impure thoughts” on these visits which left him “absolutely terrified with guilt and fear for my life. And that guilt has followed me through my life,” he wrote at the age of 80, “It took me years and years to throw off—even if I’ve done so now.”
Malleson’s plays, always personal and passionate, reflect the clash of these two conflicting and formative experiences. He was a playwright of rare insight and conviction and his plays were charged with a provocative wit and passion for social reform—including causes of sexual freedom, and equity between the sexes.
A comic presence in British films, as well as the stage, Malleson’s acting work increasingly eclipsed his playwriting. Today he might be remembered for playing the Sultan in The Thief of Bagdad (which he also wrote), the hangman in Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949, with Sir Alec Guinness) or Rev. Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952, with Edith Evans). At the time of his death in 1969, his plays had long been underestimated:
“The Malleson behind the comedian’s face, the Malleson who cared sincerely for the advancement of the liberties of man, never wholly discovered himself save to those who knew him personally.” (Times, March 17, 1969)
“LIBERTY AND LOVE? THE MARRIAGE OF DORA AND BERTRAND RUSSELL”
DEBORAH GORHAM, CARLETON UNIVERSITY
Deborah Gorham serves as Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University. She is the author of Marion Dewar: A Life of Action and Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life. She has published articles on the marriage of Dora and Bertrand Russell (which provided Malleson with inspiration for his play), and on the progressive Beacon Hill School, which the couple founded in 1927.
“TO STRAY OR NOT TO STRAY: THE SCIENCE BEHIND OPEN RELATIONSHIPS”
DR. HELEN FISHER, AUTHOR OF ANATOMY OF LOVE: A NATURAL HISTORY OF MATING, MARRIAGE AND WHY WE STRAY
Helen Fisher, PhD Biological Anthropologist, is a Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, and Chief Scientific Advisor to the Internet dating site Match.com. She has conducted extensive research and written six books on the evolution and future of human sex, love, and marriage.
“A MAN OF IDEAS: MILES MALLESON’S MODERN COMEDIES"
MAYA CANTU, THEATER HISTORIAN AND DRAMATURG
Maya Cantu is a theater historian, scholar, and Dramaturgical Advisor for the Mint. Maya currently serves on the Drama Faculty of Bennington College and is the author of the book, American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy. Her discussion will focus on the life and work of Miles Malleson.
“IT’S VERY DIFFICULT TO KEEP ON SAYING NO, ISN’T IT?”: SEX AND BRITISH MODERNISM
ANNE FERNALD, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY
Anne Fernald is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader and the editor of a textual edition of Mrs. Dalloway for Cambridge University Press. Anne will discuss the work of Miles Malleson in the context of British Modernist literature, which rejected Victorian attitudes toward sex and marriage.
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“HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?
EXPERIMENTAL MARRIAGE IN THE 20TH CENTURY”
KRISTIN CELELLO, CUNY QUEENS COLLEGE
Professor Celello is Associate Professor of History at CUNY Queens College. She is the author of Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States and the co-editor of Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties: Global Perspectives on Marriage, Crisis, and Nation. She is currently writing a book titled After Divorce: Parents, Children, and the Making of the Modern American Family.
