The Skin Game

Theatergoers who read the Mint Theater Company’s helpful program notes for John Galsworthy’s 1920 drama The Skin Game before the performance may find their thoughts wandering to one salient question during the first act, and it’s not the one that Galsworthy probably intended: Who will come out on top in the turf war between the aristocratic Hillcrists, who want to keep the view of their longtime country estate unobstructed, and the nouveau-riche, decidedly boorish Hornblowers, who plan to buy a nearby house called The Sentry and put up chimneys for their pottery plants.

No, the question at hand is: Why would Alfred Hitchcock have filmed this play way back in 1931? Not that the piece isn’t entertaining; it is! But it calls to mind Chekhov (specifically The Cherry Orchard) more than DuMaurier. Was Hitchcock’s taste in material that different back then? Was he that enamored of Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga? The answer, as in many a Hitchcock film, will soon be revealed.

The opening scene, as staged by director Eleanor Reissa, actually makes us think that we’re in for an evening of drawing room comedy. Jill Hillcrist (Nicola Lowrance) — a young woman who is dressed in a riding outfit and behaves like she’s auditioning to play Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story — is being very chummy if not downright flirty with her doting, gout-ridden dad (John C. Vennema). But trouble soon interrupts this idyll when the Jackmans, a pair of poor tenants, arrive to announce that they’re being evicted by Hornblower (James Gale) despite his earlier promise not to do so when he bought the land from the financially needy Hillcrist.

When Hornblower arrives, all brusqueness and business, it’s clear that his mind won’t be changed. In fact, he takes more than his fair share of delight in sticking it to both the Hillcrists and their tenants. His reasons for wanting to buy The Sentry and its adjacent land aren’t purely economic; they’re tinged with revenge. The Hillcrists, especially mater Amy (Monique Fowler), haven’t been particularly neighborly. True, Jill has struck up a friendship with the youngest son, Rolf (Denis Butkus). But Amy has deliberately snubbed Chloe (Diana LaMar) ,a seemingly meek young woman, since she arrived three years ago as the wife of the elder Hornblower son, Charlie (Leo Kittay).

There is a class war going on, and it soon turns out that all is fair (or unfair) in gaining victory. Amy and the family’s somewhat sleazy agent, Dawker (Stephen Rowe), have the secret weapon in this skirmish — knowledge of Chloe’s somewhat scarlet past — and they plan to use it after Hornblower uses a bit of trickery to purchase The Sentry at auction for 9,500 pounds. Daddy Hillcrist is at first reluctant to go along, since he’s not one to get his hands dirty, but his love for his family and the property takes precedence over his moral qualms.

By the time the curtain rises on Act II (or what was Scene Two of Act II in the original three-act production), the play’s focus has shifted; the men practically fade into the background, while Chloe struggles mightily to keep her secret, which isn’t fully revealed for quite a while longer, from her father-in-law and husband. Meanwhile, Amy is determined to save her family’s homestead at all costs. Now, there’s a Hitchcock film!

Reissa’s casting runs the gamut, but she was spot-on in choosing LaMar, a European-looking beauty who is extraordinary as Chloe. The actress shifts personalities between the proper lady that Chloe has become and the not-so-proper “lady” she was with great skill. True, she’s often on the verge of over-hysteria (a flaw of the script), but she’s utterly moving and ends up being the one character audiences will probably care about.

Also excellent is Fowler’s ice-queenish Amy, who’s been styled to look very much like Princess Grace in her later days. She is the very pillar of “moral” strength, even when she’s being amoral. In many ways, this chilly lady is the predecessor of such primetime soap matriarchs as Alexis Carrington and Angela Channing, not to mention the mother in The Manchurian Candidate.

Vennema does well enough as Hillcrist, even if he ends up being rather two-dimensional. Gale is a remarkably charismatic and committed actor, but he makes Hornblower a tad too hateful, and he seems to have wandered in from a Eugene O’Neill play. The big surprise is Rowe, whom I disliked intensely as the “best friend” in The Goat but who seems to be more in his element as the deceitful Dawker.

The biggest problem, both in text and performance, is the character of Jill. She’s meant to be the moral conscience of the piece but she basically seems like an upper-class twit. Moreover, the character as written is a 19-year-old girl, and a rather sheltered one at that; but Lowrance, whom I’ve seen give good performances in other shows, looks considerably older than that. One unfortunate result is that her interactions with Vennema come off as quasi-incestuous. (Hitchcock cast the 22-year-old Jill Esmond, who had just become Mrs. Laurence Olivier, as Jill in the movie.)

While there is an ultimate victor in the battle for the land, Galsworthy makes it clear that there are no real winners in this war. All hands have been bloodied. But, once again, Mint audiences are the winners in getting a chance to see this worthy if flawed work.