At the end of a career is the start of a life

Separating the satirist from the cynic is love. That Sinclair Lewis wrote satires of Midwestern life is true, but the subject of Dodsworth, as well as its animating spirit, is love. And following that spirit, the story unfolds a poignant personal drama as well as a penetrating, but loving satire of American character.

Sam Dodsworth is an American industrialist of 1929 who does nothing half-way. He retires from the company he created with the same commitment that made his Revelation Automobiles a household name: giving up his office; selling the company; turning over his home to his daughter and new son-in-law; and handing future plans to his spirited, younger wife.  Fran Dodsworth picks up where her husband leaves off, not merely wanting a much needed vacation; rather: “What I want is to get us some new selves!”

Freed from the traces of the American dream, the Dodsworth’s set off on an adult’s grand tour of Europe, but the divergence of their respective paths their personal “second acts” begins with the voyage. She is bent on beginning anew among European aristocracy; he is set on enjoying a retirement from cares. Their predictable failings and surprising trajectories create a story full of incident, humor and pathos.

As a story of two people, Dodsworth is the moving tale of a marriage growing apart, and of two souls finding themselves in later life. Both husband and wife are striving for independence, though neither knows what that means at the start. The story is larger than the couple’s, too. Lewis lays bare the childish desires behind sophisticates’ machinations, the insecurity that fuels elitists’ judgments. His satire is aimed not so much at insufficiencies and weaknesses of any character, but at the pretense of which any and all are guilty. No single vision of life that is held to account, but the collection of petty hypocrisies that all of us embrace.

But the great success of the story—first as novel, then as play, and later as radio play and film, as well—owes to its capturing something larger still. Following the innocents abroad from hometown Zenith to London, Paris, and Berlin, Dodsworth portrays an American spirit with a long history, but transforming between the wars. America continued to struggle for cultural independence from Europe for over a century after the Revolution. Now, empowered and validated by industrial growth, military accomplishment, and economic strength, the American of the ‘20’s is no longer condemned to emulate European mores or to repudiate them. The once timid youth pursues an open courtship with all cylinders firing like one of Dodsworth’s automobiles. Dodsworth shows this re-invented American to be guileless and cocksure, and yet aspiring and self-conscious. Open and obstinate, both, like a puppy tripping over its own feet, Homo americanus is full of charm and error, and capable of great and big-hearted growth.

Marrying an urbane detachment from human follies to an idealist’s affection for naïve hope, Sinclair Lewis captures the uncomplicated optimism of the birth of the American century, but describes it with an astute critic’s eye. Through Sidney Howard’s dramaturgy, characters large and small come to life in keenly observed and clever dialogue, and the moments of their story he reveals through the play are profoundly revealing, indeed.

It is in capturing this American that Dodsworth works magic. The play is full of satire, but opens its arms in hopeful embrace. For Metropolitan, it is the fitting last production in the Season of Starting Over.