NY Review: 'The House of Mirth'

Everybody has an off day, and I'm afraid that's what Metropolitan Playhouse is experiencing in its ambitious production of "The House Mirth," adapted by Clyde Fitch and Edith Wharton in 1906 from her breakthrough hit novel of just a year earlier. The story's 19 characters swirl by in too many imprecise performances, and the multiple settings, most of them playgrounds of the nouveau riche, are beyond the theater's meager resources, denying the production much-needed context and atmosphere. While director Alex Roe does achieve some victories in his sprawling staging, he can't quite pull everything together with sufficiently satisfying force.

The story follows the beautiful and brilliant but decidedly poor Lily Bart as she tries, as she puts it, to "make my living off the rich" as an ornamental guest at summer houses, on yachts, and at parties. Lily has reached the age when she is expected to have wed, but she contravenes the morals of the class she runs with by insisting on marrying for love. That man might be Lawrence Selden, if only he had more money and a better reputation; it certainly won't be the cheerfully crass Simon Rosedale, who would have her in a heartbeat. Other men want her and try to compromise her, while their ladies play their own illicit romantic games. Lily has in her possession some love letters that could bring down Bertha Dorset, the woman who has closed the doors of society to Lily and reduced her to working as a seamstress, but as the letters are addressed to Selden, Lily is torn. Finally, as Roe's excellent essay on the play puts it, "she is a woman who has gained an awful lucidity finding her place in the world: She sees she no place in it."

The show's biggest flaw, alas, is its Lily. Amanda Jones is certainly lovely enough, but her Lily is too remote and placid, lacking the necessary charisma and short on the character's wit and edge. Among the more successful performers are Metropolitan vets Rick Delaney, Peter Tedeschi, and Teresa Kelsey and newcomer Jonathan Horvath. Delaney is a forceful Augustus Trenor, the magnate who tricks Lily into coming to his rooms alone at night, clearly used to taking what he wants. Tedeschi is a self-satisfied delight as the grinning, amoral Rosedale, then switches things up as an amusing French yacht steward. Kelsey does well with a blackmailing maid and a flighty socialite. Horvath broods nicely as the hot-blooded but conflicted Selden without spilling over into melodramatics.

The same, though, can't be said for Wharton and Fitch's stage adaptation. April being the cruelest month for drama critics, I confess I was unable to find the time to reread the book, but the play's conventional structure (even for its day), obvious foreshadowing, and at times florid confrontations flatten out the characters, defang the ironies, and smother the subtleties I remember on the page.

That Roe's unchanging unit set seems more reflective of the final scene's sewing shop than all the glittering locales that precede it seems a misstep, and the lack of visual info on where we are causes us to work to piece it together from the dialogue at the start of each new scene, distracting us from focusing on the characters and their situation. The pacing also seems uncertain, especially in a long and puzzling pause taken after the yacht scene. Some of this will, of course, tighten with playing, just as characterizations are likely to grow. Nevertheless, I left the theater with the inescapable impression that the highly talented Roe and his remarkable company had bitten off just a bit more than they could chew.

Presented by and at Metropolitan Playhouse, 220 E. Fourth St., NYC. April 27–May 20. Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (Additional performance Sat, May 19, 3 p.m.) (212) 995-5302 or www.metropolitanplayhouse.org.