‘For Services Rendered’ dives deep into British veterans’ plight after World War I

For a play that unfolds mostly in quiet drawing room confrontations, “For Services Rendered” has all the momentum of runaway train barreling onward toward tragedy.

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Krystal Ortiz and Matt Fletcher in Griffin Theatre Company’s production of “For Services Rendered.”

Krystal Ortiz and Matt Fletcher in Griffin Theatre Company’s production of “For Services Rendered.”

Michael Brosilow Photo

Fans of period British dramas might be surprised at the outright acidity of W. Somerset Maugham’s “For Services Rendered,” currently playing at The Den Theatre. Whereas modern-day shows like “Downton Abbey” can’t help but apply a thick coating of nostalgia to their stories of plummy Brits stiff-upper-lipping their way from one historical event to the next, “For Services Rendered” is an unvarnished dispatch sent directly from the front lines.

This well-balanced production from director Robin Witt doesn’t even need to bring out the play’s bitter notes as they are entirely inescapable. Written in 1933, the play gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “period trappings.”

‘For Services Rendered’

Untitled

When: Through July 6

Where: The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee

Tickets: $32 - $37

Info: www.griffintheatre.com

Run time: 2 hours and 10 minutes, with one intermission


Set in a small seaside resort town, “For Services Rendered” centers around the Ardsley family, a well-to-do clan who are being trampled by the onward march of history. Led mostly in absentia by the pleasantly unpleasant Leonard (Eddie Dzialo), a local solicitor, the Ardsleys lives take place under the shadow of World War I. Their son, Sydney (Israel Antonio), was blinded in “The Great War” and is now tended to by his sister Eva (Marika Mashburn), an “old maid” whose former betrothed died in the trenches. It’s an arrangement they both loathe. (In a wonderful instance of representative casting, Antonio is, himself, visually impaired.)

Their sister Ethel (Ella Pennington), meanwhile, is tenuously married to an alcoholic tenant farmer Howard (Matt Fletcher), while the youngest Ardsley sibling, Lois (Krystal Ortiz), is fending off the advances of a rich, older neighbor, the slimy Wilfred Cedar (Matt Rockwood). Their mother, Charlotte (Lynda Shadrake), does her best to help her children —including trying to put Wilfred’s wife Gwen (Cindy Marker) off her daughter’s scent — but her mentions of a mysterious “pain” that she’s suffering hint at a future where she won’t be around to help them any longer.

Marika Mashburn and Robert Quintanilla in Griffin Theatre Company’s production of FOR SERVICES RENDERED. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

Marika Mashburn and Robert Quintanilla in Griffin Theatre Company’s production of “For Services Rendered.”

Michael Brosilow Photo

The play touches on several different areas of social ill, but its heart truly lies with the plight of England’s veterans. While all the characters are dealing with the effects of the Great Depression — or, as England called it, “The Slump”— none is harder hit than the Ardsley’s honorable family friend, Collie Stratton (Robert Quintanilla). After being forcibly discharged from the Navy — a real-life event that left thousands of sailors and officers to fend for themselves in the private sector — Collie’s business efforts have left him deeply in debt. As Leonard sits around dryly observing that Collie was a fine sailor but a terrible businessman, the man’s life quickly unravels.

And all the while, Collie cannot see the fact that Eva is terribly, madly in love with him. He might even love her in return, but he’s simply much too emotionally constipated to comprehend it. At the same time, Wilfred’s refusal to loan Collie money to pay off his creditors is juxtaposed with him paying a great deal more on a pearl necklace for Lois.

With this production, Witt takes a number of fine performances and shapes them into an evening filled with indelible moments. A hand tentatively offered here, a look shot across the room there, all these minor gestures add up to a bracingly cynical symphony of Englishness.

Unearthing midcentury gems like this one is becoming quite the fruitful business for Witt and for Griffin Theatre; her previous productions of “London Wall” and “Men Should Weep” both netted her Jeff Awards. Here she displays her knack for drawing out Maugham’s subtext and then burning it for fuel. For a play that unfolds mostly in quiet drawing room confrontations, “For Services Rendered” has all the momentum of runaway train barreling onward toward tragedy. No spoilers, but the play’s ending is almost a sick joke; one so dark that it’s funny.

 Israel Antonio and Lynda Shadrake in Griffin Theatre Company’s production of FOR SERVICES RENDERED. Photo by Michael Brosilow.

Israel Antonio and Lynda Shadrake in Griffin Theatre Company’s production of “For Services Rendered.”

Michael Brosilow

Still, there are limits to this mode of storytelling, mostly in the way Maugham draws clean lines around his characters, their personalities and foibles defined by larger social issues. Despite his absolute skill as a writer of dialogue and a conniver of plot, it’s all-too-easy to see where the story is going. That contemporary audiences will find a frightening number of parallels in the story is a plus, no doubt about it. But it’s hard not to long for, say, Anton Chekhov’s loopy, at times surreal sense for empathetic satire over Maugham’s refined sense of superiority.

“For Services Rendered” has a very Chekhovian premise, after all — just swap out “country estate” for “seaside town.” So why does this tale of Maugham’s now languish in near obscurity while Chekhov’s plays remain in heavy circulation? Maugham would probably have the answer — and that’s kind of the problem.

Alex Huntsberger is a local freelance writer.

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