Phyl

PHYL is the story of Phyllis Chester, a passionate, feisty young woman desperate to break through the barriers that confine her, eager to find excitement, pleasure and happiness.

Cicely Hamilton (1872-1952) was an actor, an author and a crusader for women’s rights who believed that true progress requires recognizing woman “as a responsible human being with an individuality and interests of her own.” She wrote several plays tackling social issues.  But it was DIANA OF DOBSON’S that caught London’s eye and heart with its light touch and romantic bent in spite of its consideration of ‘serious issues.’  First performed in London in 1908, the play was “accepted as a true picture of the shop-assistant’s life,” to quote from a 1908 press clipping that, “convinced people that something should be done about it.”

On Friday, October 23rd at 7 PM, Mint will present a reading of DIANA OF DOBSON’S, introduced by J. Ellen Gainor of Cornell University, who suggested the play to us in 2001.

Crooked Cross

You might think streaming is free because we don’t have any expenses. Not True! Actors, designers and directors are all paid salaries, not to mention the cost of making the recordings.

CROOKED CROSS draws us into the story of the Klugers, facing the economic and political challenges of life in a quaint village in the Bavarian mountainside between Christmas 1932 and June 1933.

Sylvia “Sally” Carson, was born in 1901 in Surrey. For several years she was a publisher’s reader and taught dance; during this time she frequently went to stay in Bavaria with friends. It was first in Germany and then back in England that she wrote her trilogy of novels including Crooked Cross in 1934, followed by The Prisoner (1936) and A Traveler Passes By (1938) which continue the story of the Kluger family. In 1938 she married Eric Humphries who ran the Bradford works of the publisher Lund Humphries, founded by his father. Together they had three children. Tragically, Sally died of breast cancer in 1941.

Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories

Mint Theater Company presents a program of short plays adapted from stories by two of the world’s greatest authors, Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. These dramatic adaptations are from one of our favorite playwrights, Miles Malleson, author of Mint productions, Conflict and Yours Unfaithfully, both New York Times Critic’s Picks.

As a playwright, screenwriter, director, producer, and character actor, Miles Malleson  (1888-1969) established himself as a theatre artist of dazzling versatility. Yet while Malleson “acted the fool most memorably” in dozens of plays and films, he was also a playwright of provocative wit, searching insight and, as described by The Manchester Guardian, a sense of “ethical passion” drawing upon a lifelong engagement in progressive politics.

A Day By the Sea

After our acclaimed production of A PICTURE OF AUTUMN, Mint revisited the work of playwright N.C. Hunter with A DAY BY THE SEA. A warm, human, and often humorous depiction of the ‘crisis’ of middle age, the play tells the story of Julian Anson, a once-promising Foreign Service employee, who confronts professional disappointment and personal failure while picnicking along the English seaside.

N.C. Hunter (1908-1971) was one of the leading English dramatists of the 1950s and early 1960s. As theatrical revolution—spearheaded by John Osborne and his school of “angry young men”—exploded around him, Hunter kept his head down and provided moving portraits of a people questioning their own purpose in chaotic post-war England.

A Picture of Autumn

“N.C. Hunter’s beautiful, shamefully neglected comedy was performed only once in London in 1951, and receives its American premiere here,” wrote The New Yorker of Mint Theater’s A PICTURE OF AUTUMN. “It’s about an aging, once prosperous family living in an aging, once grand manor, and the echoes of Chekhov are unmistakable, if subdued and Anglicized. It’s a big, generous play, exquisitely written, both funny and touching.” ¹

N.C. HUNTER (1908-1971) was one of the leading English dramatists of the 1950s and early 1960s. As theatrical revolution—spearheaded by John Osborne and his school of “angry young men”—exploded around him, Hunter kept his head down and provided moving portraits of a people questioning their own purpose in chaotic post-war England.

Susan and God

“Surprisingly up-to-date, fast-paced, and engaging,”¹ declared the New York Times of Rachel Crothers’ neglected masterwork, SUSAN AND GOD. The 2006 production reclaimed Crothers as the “first lady” of American playwrights and was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts: Mint’s first.

RACHEL CROTHERS (1878-1958) was born in Bloomington, Illinois. When her mother embarked on a medical career, Crothers was sent to live with an aunt in Massachusetts. She learned early about the struggle to balance a career with family life. The lesson would prove a recurrent theme in her plays.

Far and Wide

Known mainly for his oft-adapted work La Ronde (or Reigen), FAR AND WIDE (Das weite Land) introduced New York audiences to European playwright Arthur Schnitzler as they had never seen him before. FAR AND WIDE is a complex examination of love and sex among the decadent upper classes of early twentieth century Vienna. It opened simultaneously in nine European cities in 1911 but was never seen in New York until Jonathan Bank’s adaptation premiered at the Mint in 2003.

Arthur Schnitzler (Playwright 1862-1931) was one of the most famous of all of the great personalities in Vienna at the turn of the last century.  A prolific author, Schnitzler wrote more than twenty prose works including stories, novellas and novels in addition to over twenty-five plays.  From before 1900 until 1925, Schnitzler was more talked about, and his plays were more performed on the stages of Germany and Austria than any other writer.  Schnitzler was both a Jew and a critic of the Austrian Monarchy, contributing to the censorship of his work in his lifetime, and by the Nazi’s after his death.  His work ultimately suffered the same fate as the Viennese culture that he was describing and vanished into obscurity after Word War I.    His best-known play today is probably Reigen a.k.a. La Ronde.  This work was the basis for The Blue Room by David Hare, as well as the recently released film Love in the Time of Money.  Audiences may also be familiar with Anatol, an early work (1893) consisting of seven scenes variously controversial, censored or banned for immorality.  Neither of these plays accurately represents the breadth or depth of Schnitzler’s genius; what Benedict Nightingale describes as his “inquisitive, complex, formidably moral intelligence.”

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