Reviews

Soldier’s Wife

Angela Pierce and Michael Polak in Soldier's Wife
(Photo © Richard Termine)
Angela Pierce and Michael Polak in Soldier’s Wife
(Photo © Richard Termine)

How does one define “worthy”? A theatergoer might put this question to Jonathan Bank, artistic director of the Mint Theater Company, which has spent the past 14 years presenting overlooked dramatic literary works. As the Mint’s mission statement goes, the company aims “to bring new vitality to worthy but neglected plays.” Does Bank mean artistically worthy or simply worthy to be resuscitated by virtue of a work’s being illustrative of the period in which it was written? For most of the Mint’s history, the answer seems to have landed squarely on the artistically worthy side of things; but with the revival of Rose Franken’s forgotten 1944 comedy-drama, Soldier’s Wife, directed by Eleanor Reissa, the conclusion isn’t quite so clear.

Katherine Rogers (played by Angela Pierce, perky as all get-out and sometimes excessively so) welcomes husband John (the likable Michael Polak) home on medical leave from the Pacific. As the two are reaccustoming themselves to one another after their separation, the letters that Katherine wrote to John while he was away become a potential best-seller titled Soldier’s Wife, thanks to the efforts of an Army buddy of John’s who works in the publishing business. Consequently, the couple is besieged by playwright/journalist Alexander Craig (Jordan Lage) and woman’s magazine editor Peter Gray (Kate Levy — and, yes, the character is female). Suddenly, the Rogerses’ only link to normal life is Katherine’s sister, Florence Lane (Judith Hawking in an attractively forthright performance), who’s always on hand to babysit the unseen Rogers toddler.

Over the course of three acts, here played with two intermissions as intended, Franken never settles on what she wants the play to be. In the first act, when John returns unexpectedly, the author writes with some sensitivity about the difficulty soldiers faced on reentering so-called normal life. “We’re coming home to women who’ve gone through their own kind of hell and who can take it the same as we have,” John blurts. “Suppose I don’t go back to fight? What do you need me for?”

In Act II, John’s discomfort lessens considerably. With the introduction of the lubricious Craig and Gray, Franken switches gears to offer a drawing room comedy about a marriage that could come apart when glamorous temptations loom. What little suspense there is hinges on whether or not Katherine and John will succumb to sophistication’s beckoning finger. Not that Craig and Gray are so sophisticated. On the contrary, they come across in 2006 as a very 1940s idea of what passed for sophistication, their dialogue marked by ironic understatement, winking cynicism, and arched eyebrows. They’re callow sophisticates despite the suave playing by Lage and Levy, who
sports a couple of peaked chapeaux that must have cheered costumer Clint Ramos when he came upon them. (Ramos does well by the period throughout, although the men’s ties aren’t right.) The apartment overlooking the Hudson that Nathan Heverin has designed –complete with flowery cretonne slipcovers in the second and third acts — is convincing with the exception of a far-too-modern intercom.

Best known for her series of Claudia novels, Franken extolled marital bliss. Ironically, though her career was encouraged by both of her husbands, what she pitched commercially was akin to the “barefoot and pregnant” line. In the higgledy-piggledy Soldier’s Wife, Katherine even thanks hubby John for spanking her! The message is anything but timely, and the play is worthy now only for its backward glance at then.