Trips to the Mint Theater, a company dedicated to excavating unfairly neglected plays, often provoke in me a twinge of foreboding. If this piece is really any good, why isn’t it better known? Invariably, however, the insightful and respectful direction makes an eloquent case for the play, and, by the final bows, the canon has grown by one title.

D.H. Lawrence and Arthur Schnitzler are among the playwrights to have gotten the Mint treatment, and the newest beneficiary is John Galsworthy, the Nobel laureate known best – and, for many of us, known only – for his sprawling “Forsyte Saga,” a series of novels and short stories recently remade for PBS. Among his many other works was the 1920 play “The Skin Game,” dimly remembered now as a middling film that Alfred Hitchcock made in his pre-Hollywood days. But director Eleanor Reissa and the Mint’s accomplished acting company have given it a crisp, compelling revival.

The play follows the escalating feud between the well-born Hillcrists and the up-and-coming Hornblowers. The Hornblowers’ industrialist ambitions pose a dire threat to the idyllic life of the Hillcrists, and indignation stemming from a broken oral agreement quickly escalates into a brawl with near-fatal consequences. (The play’s title comes from a slangy description of the feud, a fight with the gloves taken off.)

Brawls seem to be nothing new to Hornblower (James Gale), who plans to build a Dickensian pottery factory practically in the Hillcrists’ front yard. Hornblower looks like a middleweight boxer, sounds like Shrek – with “an accent not quite Scotch nor quite North country,” according to Galsworthy’s stage directions – and acts like Lopakhin, the usurping arriviste who buys the land out from under the Ranevskayas in “The Cherry Orchard.”

Unlike Chekhov’s emotionally ill-equipped family, though, the Hillcrists are capable of rallying. Or at least Mrs. Hillcrist is: Amy (Monique Fowler) is left to handle the dirty work, a bit of blackmail involving Hornblower’s alluring daughter-in-law Chloe (Diana LaMar), while the rest of the Hillcrists stand off to the side. “Who touches pitch shall be defiled,” her husband (John C. Vennema) proclaims loftily, a fate that befalls pretty much everyone by the final curtain.

Ms. Fowler conveys both Amy’s solicitude and her hauteur effectively, and Ms. LaMar likewise shines. Mr. Vennema and Mr. Gale are terrific as the brawling patriarchs. Pat Nesbit gets impressive mileage out of two tiny roles. They get considerable aid throughout from Traci Christensen’s elegant, class-conscious costumes, while Vicki R. Davis’s witty set brings the pastoral landscape right into the Hillcrist home.

Not every moment of the production works. A lengthy scene involving a property auction, conducted largely off stage, contains several dry patches. (Curiously, this was the only scene Hitchcock really seemed excited about filming.) Several of the younger actors fall prey to accents that come and go, and dialect coach Amy Stoller must accept much of the blame for the often haphazard dialect work.

Truth be told, “The Skin Game” isn’t much more than a Hatfield-McCoy yarn with an overlay of class warfare. It leans heavily on the devices of melodrama, with shocking secrets and reversals of fortune in almost every scene. Ms. Reissa fleshes out the humanity of Galsworthy’s characters, and does so without sacrificing narrative tension.

As Chloe’s secret is gradually unveiled, the director peels past the play’s genteel surface to get at the bloody sinew and gristle underneath. Drawing-room dramas like this don’t often tap into such raw, fervid emotions, and it’s a testament to Ms. Reissa and the excellent Ms. LaMar that these scenes feel totally of a piece with the rest of the play.

In an early sparring match between the two families, Hornblower preemptively defends his humble lineage to Mrs. Hillcrist: “Am I lucky to have no past, ma’am? Just the future?” “The Skin Game” once again has a future as well as a past, which has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with the Mint Theater.

***

The New York Fringe Festival started a month early this year.

Technically, you need to wait until August 12 to sample the self-referential send-ups of pop-culture detritus that have commandeered the festival. (Among this year’s offerings: “Little House on the Parody” and a “Silence of the Lambs” musical.) But if you’d rather pay off- Broadway prices for a Fringe-caliber show, consider “Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy,” a glib, ungainly blend of gender politics and kung fu histrionics.

Authors/costars Alana McNair and Kate Wilkinson take substantial liberties with the 1987 hell-hath-no-fury thriller, but they and director Timothy Haskell hit all the high points. The elevator, the mega-perm, the boiled bunny, the bathtub: We get them all in almost half the time, with plenty of room for windowsmashing martial-arts smackdowns, songs from “Miss Saigon” (filling in for the movie’s “Madame Butterfly”), and a full Corey Feldman dance number.

Mr. Feldman, veteran of innumerable 1980s teen flicks, has graduated to the role of Michael Douglas. Not Dan Gallagher, Mr. Douglas’s “Fatal Attraction” character, but Mr. Douglas himself: One of the playwrights’ less successful notions is the idea that the actual actors are somehow performing the on-stage action.

Mr. Feldman, a good sport throughout, does a credible Michael Douglas impersonation without really looking or sounding anything like him. No such attempt is made with Glenn Close and Anne Archer – the actresses, respectively, instead tweak the movie’s pitiful stereotypes of “bad women” (ones with jobs) and “good women” (housewives).

But wait, what about the “Greek Tragedy” part? Doesn’t the protagonist always suffer mightily in Greek tragedies – die or at least pluck his eyes out? Didn’t Michael Douglas emerge from the movie essentially unscathed, with two babes fighting to the death over him? McNair and Wilkinson hedge on this a bit.

Four supporting players fill in as a Greek chorus, chanting snippets from actual Greek tragedies along with excerpts from century-old etiquette guides. The latter passages provide the play’s funniest and most incisive social commentary. Mr. Haskell’s direction of the foursome is cluttered and intrusive, however, and he’s equally unsuccessful with a cross-dressing Aaron Haskell (his younger brother) as the movie’s endangered little girl.

The playwrights have written a handful of sharp lines. (Take this post-coital phone conversation: “So I really liked having sex with you in that elevator. That was really hot.” “Who is this?”) Ms. Wilkinson navigates the mayhem with wit and versatility as Anne Archer, and Rod Kinter’s fight direction also warrants praise. But the show doesn’t have the discipline to catch or even remember all the ideas it throws in the air. This may not qualify as a tragedy, Greek or otherwise, but it certainly is a pity.

‘The Skin Game’ until August 14 (311 W. 43rd Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 212-315-0231).

‘Fatal Attraction’ until August 27 (between Third and Fourth Avenues, 212-279-4200).