he grew up the third son of a coal miner.
Lawrence's most widely read novel, Sons and Lovers is an autobiographical account of his youth and was written at the same time as The Daughter-in-Law, which also plumbs the conflict between mother and lover. D. H. Lawrence was a brilliant and often difficult man. Few modern writers have been as strikingly original or as controversial. Few have inspired such passionate admiration and such committed opposition.
Lawrence is the author of eight full-length plays, none of which he ever saw on stage in his lifetime. The Daughter-in-Law was available in print for the first time in 1965. In 1968, The Royal Court produced The Daughter-in-Law along with The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd and A Collier's Friday Night, all under the direction of Peter Gill, and the process of establishing Lawrence's reputation as a great playwright was begun, nearly forty years after his death. Over the last three and a half decades that reputation has grown, and appreciation for Lawrence's gifts as a dramatist is now undeniable.
Mint Theater Company has been producing plays at our W. 43rd St. location since our inception in 1992, specializing in “bringing new vitality to worthy, but neglected plays”. Mint was awarded an Obie Grant in 2001 for “combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition.” Included on the list of lost theatrical treasures found by the Mint is our recent hit production of Arthur Schnitzler’s Far and Wide (Das weite Land), returning to Mint in August 2003. Also: the New York premiere of Harley GranvilleBarker’s brilliant comedy The Voysey Inheritance, the New York premiere of Welcome to Our City by Thomas Wolfe, the first New York performance in over fifty
years of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the first N.Y. revival’s of the Pulitzer-Prize winning plays Alison’s House by Susan Glaspell & Miss Lulu Bett by Zona Gale, as well as of A.A. Milne's comedy of morals, Mr Pim Passes By. Mint produced the only revival ever of Edith Wharton’s dramatization of her powerful novel, The House of Mirth; as well as the New York premiere of August Snow & Night Dance, two plays by the great American writer Reynolds Price. Please visit our website: www.minttheater.org
Special Post-Performance Events join us for any events with your tickets stub from any performance - just arrive 21/2 hours after the performance start time.
Saturday, June 7th following the matinee
Artistic Director Jonathan Bank, director Martin Platt and dialect coach Amy Stoller will take your questions.
Tuesday, June 10th
Artistic Director Jonathan Bank and the cast will take your questions.
Saturday, June 14th following the matinee
Dr. Elanor Green, President-elect of the D.H. Lawrence Society, North America will speak about Lawrence and take your questions.
Sunday, June 22nd following the matinee
Dr. Shirley Glass, psychologist, leading specialist on relationships and the author of Not Just Friends will offer marriage counseling to the characters from The Daughter-inLaw and speak about her book and her work as well as take your questions.
Dialect Terms from Eastwood Blortin and bletherin'
By guyney Chelp
Talking and babbling nonsense.
By Jove! (guyney may refer to Guy, Earl of Warwick-or be a euphemism for God). Cheek, answering back.
Chuntering
Grumbling..
Gabey
A foolish person..
Clat-Fart
Marded Morm
A gossip - our favorite Eastwood word! Make soft, to spoil (from: mardy childish, cowardly, cry-babyish. Wander about aimlessly.
Mun
Dialect word for “must”.
Sawne
Simpleton.
Orts and Slarts Slorm
Sluther Wallit
Leftovers.
D.H. Lawrence
Sullen, crawling. Literally to sprawl out, or lie across. Lawrence extends the meaning to acting slushy or mushy.
To drag one’s feet, or dawdle along. Slutherers are lazy loafers.
Useless or clumsy; from wallick- or wallit-handed, meaning lefthanded.
Ahta gooin on?* A Note from the Dialect Coach.
As a production dialect coach, I am always in conflict with myself. The Purist in me falls in love with the unique sounds of the language I encounter in the script. The Pragamatist knows I must help make unfamiliar words and phrases clear not only to the actors, but also to our audience. In The Daughter-in-Law, D. H. Lawrence recreates the “heart-speech” of his workingclass father, as well as the “head-speech” of his mother, who had middle-class aspirations for herself and her children. The script is written mostly in an inconsistent rendering of “Ilson” (a dialect rife with Old English holdovers and Scandinavian borrowwords), incorporating Standard English (albeit with local accent) for one of the five roles.
Even in England, this sort of thing poses a problem. Folk from one part of the country often have trouble understanding folk from another, and the more obscure the dialect, the greater the difficulty. Many British companies more or less throw up their hands and graft a modern South Yorkshire accent onto adaptations of Lawrence’s works, though they are set in the Erewash Valley, and Yorkshire is somewhere else entirely. (continued)