It’s fun to see a play which was written ninety years ago but never before staged in London. Mint Theater, which has co-produced Yours Unfaithfully with Jermyn Street Theatre, is a New York company whose mission is to dig up forgotten, neglected plays and to air them afresh. Mint’s artistic director, Jonathan Bank, staged this play in New York in 2016 but has now directed this new production with an all-English cast.

It’s the 1930s and we seem, initially, to be in a traditional drawing room drama except that this one is about free love, open marriage and sex. Anne (Laura Doddington) and Stephen (Guy Lewis) are a married couple with an understanding that flings on the side are fine – except, of course, that they love each other and whenever there’s an affair the other partner is jealous. It’s an exploration of the insidious habit feelings have of overpowering logic.  Also in the mix are Diana (Keisha Atwell), a young widow with whom Stephen starts an affair and Alan (Dominic Marsh) a doctor friend of them both and old flame of Anne’s. Tony Timberlake plays Stephen’s overbearing clergyman father who has inflexible, traditional views about sexual morality and a passion for cricket.

These five bounce off each other as they try, often unsuccessfully, to live their beliefs with truth and integrity. There is, however, a lot of discussion and although the occasional line is very funny it’s generally a rather wordy play despite the best efforts of Jonathan Bank to stage as much action and movement as possible in Jermyn Street’s limited playing space.

Doddington is superb. She finds warmth, suppressed emotion and a lot of brittleness in her character and her visible listening is very convincing. Lewis’s Stephen is openly emotional and he is very good at speaking silent volumes with his face. And Marsh gives us a character who is logical, wise, reasonable and kind. He’d be good to next to at a dinner party.

When you have no curtains or screens lighting becomes extra important. William Reynolds’s design makes imaginative use of  blackout for dramatic effect and is especially good when Anne finds Stephen asleep on the sofa in warming dawn light.

It’s a decent, enjoyable quite modest two hours of theatre but it doesn’t get under your skin or set fires alight.

First published by Sardines: https://www.sardinesmagazine.co.uk/review/yours-unfaithfully/