In 2001, the Mint Theater Company — that little engine that could — rubbed the dust off Harley Granville-Barker’s 1905 drama “The Voysey Inheritance,” gave it its New York premiere, and produced a real hit. A new David Mamet version of “Voysey” is now playing to enthusiastic reviews at the Atlantic; meanwhile, the Mint has gone back into Mr. Granville-Barker’s drawer and pulled out “The Madras House,” a 1909 play that hasn’t been seen in New York in 86 years.

Sometimes, as with “Voysey,” the Mint unearths a play that feels as fresh and compelling as anything on a New York stage. Other times, as with “The Madras House,” a rediscovered classic proves more educational than inspiring. Despite the skillful direction of Gus Kaikonnen, who finds the laughs and the shocks in the dated material, “The Madras House” (which clocks in at three hours) is a jumble of ideas, characters, and themes.

The play is a sudsy saga of a wealthy family of British industrialists on the brink of selling its women’s clothing business to an enterprising American. It has plenty of plum roles to go around: first and foremost, the family’s scion, Constantine Madras (George Morfogen), a serial adulterer who finally left his wife and son for Arabia, where he’s become a “Mohammedan” and a polygamist. Then there’s Constantine’s abandoned, querulous wife Amelia (Roberta Maxwell), his emotionless son, Philip (Thomas Hammond, the reliable center of the entire play), and Philip’s cultivated wife, Jessica (Lisa Bostnar).

There’s also Constantine’s estranged brother-in-law, the conventional Henry Huxtable (Jonathan Hogan), and his wife and five daughters, who sprawl about their massive country manse with nothing much to do except needlepoint. And at the office, there’s a whole auxiliary set of characters, including a flamboyant gay designer, a pregnant seamstress, and a sniffy dorm mother.

As this laundry list of characters suggests, “The Madras House” is a real hodgepodge. All of the characters have some relationship, however tangential, to the family business, the Madras House clothing concern, and all but one have some variant of a British accent. They populate four distinct acts (unfolding over two days) that seem to have little to do with each other — a visit to the relatives, a meeting in the boss’s office, a business transaction, and a domestic dispute.

Between the sumptuous locations (elegant mansions, a fashion show) and the stimulating subplots (a worker scandal, the dramatic reappearance of the long-lost Constantine), one would expect “The Madras House” to have a juicy, tabloid feel. But Granville-Barker, a dyed-in-the-wool intellectual who was an aficionado of Ibsen and Shaw, is intent on stuffing the scenes with ideological debates.

Though the plot ostensibly centers on the reunion of the self-absorbed Constantine with his abandoned family, this event only furnishes an occasion for Granville-Barker to hash out his views on women. In the course of the play, we get women as runway mannequins, as withering spinsters, as loudmouthed workingclass girls, as fretful, housebound wives. These female characters seem to exist only to supply their loquacious male counterparts with ready examples for their long debates about the proper place of women in society and the workplace.

One female character towers over the rest — the defiant Marion Yates, who gets pregnant after a fling and nobly refuses to feign marriage or to track down the baby’s father. Philip, aman much in love with progressive ideas who nurses dreams of running for the county council, is much taken with her arguments — that only by having the baby on her own, without strings attached, can she preserve her self-respect.

Spurred to thinking deep thoughts by such a provocative case, Philip makes the rounds of boardrooms and drawing rooms, declaring that women must become educated, free beings. In response, the other fellows advocate everything from traditional roles to polygamy.

These longwinded discussions have the feeling of college bull sessions, but Mr. Kaikkonen does his best to keep them lively A few of the actors — including the fine Mary Bacon as Marion Yates and the gutsy Angela Reed as Freda, a worker’s nervy wife — manage to sound as if they’re speaking words, not lines, but it’s an uphill battle. Ultimately, Granville-Barker’s soapbox habit exhausts one’s patience. But while significant trims might have made “The Madras House” more engaging, one senses that cuts would have undermined its authenticity. The Mint’s production captures an era when British upper-crust males were awakening to the degradation imposed on both working class men and their womenfolk. Ultimately, the play may amount to a history lesson, but it’s an interesting and relatively painless one.

Until March 25 (311 W. 43rd St. at Eighth Avenue, 212-315-0231).