Review: Elizabeth Baker’s Partnership Is a Musty Screed Against Traditional Marriage

Marriage is a business relationship. It always has been, and I suspect that the high rate of divorce seen in the latter 20^th century can be partially blamed on the widespread adoption of a naive all-you-need-is-love attitude. But is it possible to be too practical when selecting a spouse? Elizabeth Baker thought so, as she made clear in her 1917 polemical drama Partnership, which is now making its belated American premiere with Mint Theater Company.

Mint and its artistic director Jonathan Bank have championed Baker’s now mostly forgotten work with productions of The Price of Thomas Scott (2019) and Chains (2022), which was both the most challenging and successful of the Baker trilogy. Partnership is a lesser sort of morality play with a predictable trajectory. Whatever shred of suspense or doubt the script offers is quickly brushed aside by cartoonishly on-the-nose performances.

Act 1 takes place in the back room of the small Brighton dress shop owned by Kate Rolling (Sara Haider). She wants to expand to the larger space next door, and she gets an opportunity when milliner George Pillatt (Gene Gillette) offers to lease the space and combine the two stores, putting Kate in charge. He also promises to deliver prestige clients like the Duchess of Wideacres and Lady Smith-Carr-Smith (Christiane Noll in an appropriately ludicrous cameo). There’s just one condition: She must marry him.

His reason isn’t love, but pure business calculation. This is to be an engagement sealed with a handshake over drying ink on a contract. “I am not a sentimentalist,” he coos, “but then you, a woman of business, do not wish for any expression of sentiment.” And being a thoroughly modern businesswoman, Kate naturally agrees.

But the country air of the second act (which takes place on the Downs) causes her to second-guess her cold careerism as she becomes infatuated with Lawrence Fawcett (Joshua Echebiri), a man who walked away from a lucrative corset business to pursue the less constricting (and less profitable) world of dyes. He may not be rolling in dough, but at least he’s not a slave to work and can enjoy his true passion: long walks through the countryside. Kate can easily imagine walking by his side, and when she seems to lose interest in her own business in the third act, there’s little mystery about which path she will choose.

Some of that comes down to Gillette’s slimy, hair-raising performance, which lets us know with every distended vowel and sideways glance that Pillatt is a sinister figure. Gillette’s yawning, hypnotic diction is reminiscent of a snake about to unhinge his jaw and swallow Kate whole. Anyone would run from such a Mephistophelean presence.

Haider’s more natural, no-nonsense presence assures us that Kate will eventually see this. Unfortunately, she has zero chemistry with Echebiri, who turns in a somewhat wooden performance (his face only really lights up when he’s talking about dyes). It’s hard to see him as her knight in shining armor, and we in the 21^st century wonder if an independent woman like Kate even needs that.

As she did in Chains, Olivia Gilliatt delivers the most memorable performance of the evening as Maisie Glow, Kate’s current business partner and this play’s unwavering voice of marital Machiavellianism. Eminently sensible, she suggests Kate stick to her plan and “keep the Fawcett lad for odd moments.” And why not? Men have been doing just that in their unhappy marriages for millennia. Gilliatt brilliantly offers the only convincing voice of dissent in this World War I-era rom-com, and I wanted to cheer every time she referred to Kate as a “fool.”

Director Jackson Grace Gay has staged a surprisingly zippy production for a show that runs 2 hours, 20 minutes with two intermissions. Alexander Woodard’s set accomplishes a lot on a shallow stage, conveying how cramped the dress shop is while allowing us to easily imagine the spaces beyond (the tasteful sound design, by Daniel Baker & Co., also contributes to this task). Kindall Almond’s detailed period costumes look gorgeous under Mary Louise Geiger’s well-calibrated lighting. As is the case with most Mint shows, this is a very competent production of a play that has earned its obscurity.

Baker is a prescient critic on the “workism” that so many secular Westerners have adopted as their true religion. But Partnership is still the story of a successful woman running her business into the ground because a man is giving her attention. She only ceases this behavior when that very man gives her permission to stop. This is a tale that even the most anti-capitalist women in the audience will have a hard time accepting as a comedy with a happy ending.