The Fanatics

John Freeman and his sister Gwen, disillusioned by the Great War—are each trying to forge lives based on radical new ideas about love, sex and marriage—while living under their parents’ roof.

THE FANATICS is the third Malleson play produced by the Mint. First came the world-premiere of YOURS UNFAITHFULLY, an “un-romantic comedy” about the price of free love in 2017, and in 2018, CONFLICT, about political rivals in love with the same woman. “Both plays argue for Malleson as a playwright of insight, wit and compassion. He is also a writer who takes sex seriously. And it never occurs to him to punish his characters for wanting it and having it. That gets my vote,” declared Alexis Soloski in the Times.

THE FANATICS was Malleson’s most successful play. It was published in 1924, and after much wrangling with the censor, finally produced in 1927 in a version in which “several extensive cuts were made” (as described in a later edition of the author’s preferred version.) Although THE FANATICS is filled with wit and humor, it is also fueled by post-war rage and predicts the next war.