THE NEW YORK TIMES

ONLY THE PITIABLE ARE INVITED TO A PARTY GIVEN BY DO-GOODERS

BRUCE WEBER

October 14, 2002

The early part of the Off Broadway season has been plentiful in resurrections, that is, revisits to plays assumed dead, or at least buried. None, however, have been dredged up from deeper in obscurity than ”The Charity That Began at Home,” which was written in 1906 and has never been seen before in New York. The Mint Theater Company — which is responsible for its worthwhile exhumation and worthy reanimation, directed by Gus Kaikkonen — says the play hasn’t been seen anywhere since an English production in 1917.

The author, St. John Hankin, was a Briton, a contemporary and friend of George Bernard Shaw, and like him a social critic. ”The Charity That Began at Home” is a drawing-room comedy that skewers the do-gooder spirit that evidently infused the upper crust of British society during the Edwardian years.

The early part of the Off Broadway season has been plentiful in resurrections, that is, revisits to plays assumed dead, or at least buried. None, however, have been dredged up from deeper in obscurity than ”The Charity That Began at Home,” which was written in 1906 and has never been seen before in New York. The Mint Theater Company — which is responsible for its worthwhile exhumation and worthy reanimation, directed by Gus Kaikkonen — says the play hasn’t been seen anywhere since an English production in 1917.

The author, St. John Hankin, was a Briton, a contemporary and friend of George Bernard Shaw, and like him a social critic. ”The Charity That Began at Home” is a drawing-room comedy that skewers the do-gooder spirit that evidently infused the upper crust of British society during the Edwardian years.

Also like Shaw, Hankin was prone to didacticism, though he couldn’t match (who could?) Shaw’s dazzling verbosity or persuasive ardor. The result here is a slow-moving play that occasionally feels like a primer, as though the playwright were leading an audience by the nose through a step-by-step argument. For today’s audience (that is, one with less patience and more intuition than Hankin’s contemporary one), ”Charity” could benefit from a good pruning.

Still, that’s the only way this layered and surprisingly rich play feels dated. For one thing, in its curious narrative path it disdains the expected neatness of structure, dispatching several characters and potential plot lines in mid-play without looking back. For another, the play exhibits an admirable complexity in its attitude toward its characters; Hankin has compassion for the people he makes fun of and isn’t fearful of rendering his most sympathetic characters foolish or unhappy. The play reveals an anti-romanticism almost never found in literature of any kind. When was the last time you read a novel or saw a movie or a play that made the argument that two young people who love each other shouldn’t count on their love to sustain them? That they’d be better off breaking up than trying to live with the differences in their characters?

The story concerns the charitable practices of a wealthy, dithering aristocrat known as Lady Dennison (Kristin Griffith) and her sweet-tempered daughter Margery (Harmony Schuttler). They have become enthralled by a self-styled clergyman, Mr. Hylton (Benjamin Howes), whose notion is that every sin is forgivable, and that life is best lived as a perpetual effort on behalf of the lonely, the poor, the disdained, the unpleasant, the criminal. This has led to all manner of disturbance among the servants, many of whom have been hired to give them the opportunity to mend their wayward habits. And it has also led, as the play opens, to a social gathering at Lady Dennison’s country house in which all the guests have been invited because they are pitiable in some way.

So we have the insistent, tiresome bore, General Bonsor (Lee Moore); the unmannerly Mrs. Horrocks (Michele Tauber), a woman whose girth and self-esteem are both overinflated; the stiff-spined spinsterish German teacher, Miss Triggs (Alice White); the desperately shy and jittery Mr. Firket (Christopher Franciosa); and Hugh Verreker (Karl Kenzler), a roguish fellow known to be down on his luck.

The play’s first two acts (before intermission) consist of the antics of this menagerie, presented with a sly, but conventional satire and with much of the cast paying fierce attention to their accents and eccentricities. Ms. Griffith does a nice job as the well-intended but hopelessly dotty Lady Dennison, even though she sounds like a British Aunt Bea. The same can’t be said of Becky London, who as her impatient and forthright sister-in-law, Mrs. Eversleigh, has many of the play’s best lines, but tends to bellow them.

In any case it is after intermission that Hankin’s more complicated intentions become clear, as he shows what happens in individual lives when goodness becomes dogmatic. He has Margery and Hugh fall in love and persuade everyone that such a match is not only palatable but desirable. And just when a happy ending seems imminent, the play turns its final, unexpected corner.

This ending is unfortunately overwritten and overexplained, but the ideas are provocative, and the lingering feeling interestingly melancholy. It’s also helped by the two best performances. Ms. Schuttler, a lovely young actress from South Dakota whose English accent seems effortless, is perfectly cast as Margery, a selfless girl whom love (or so Hankin is arguing here) turns selfish. And Mr. Kenzler is deft with the raffish swagger of Hugh Verreker; he brings a needed irreverence both to the Dennison drawing room and to the play. Together the two conduct an appealing courtship whose rise and fall feels very modern indeed.