First Priority Club - May 2018

In 1921, Molnar’s Liliom was a stunning success, on Broadway. The Times called it “a wise and beautiful play— and odd, fantastic comedy…the year has brought us no play more interesting, none more truly worth going to see.” When the play was revived in 1932, Brooks Atkinson called the play “one of the most lovable plays in modern drama.”

Benefit Reading: Liliom

By Ferenc Molnár

Directed by Jesse Marchese Monday, June 11, 7:00PM Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd St)

Further Reading:

Black ‘Ell and D Company

By Miles Malleson Directed by Matt Dickson Monday, July 16, 7:00PM Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd St)

DIRECTED BY

JESSE MARCHESE

Liliom remained wildly popular in America throughout the early 20th century—until Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein re-fashioned the play into their hit musical Carousel.

Molnár was generally opposed to adaptation of his plays and Liliom was no exception. He was first approached by composer Giacomo Puccini, who wanted to use the play as the basis for an opera. Molnár refused, saying, “I want it to be remembered as Molnár’s Liliom, not Puccini’s Liliom.”

Mint Theater is pleased to present Molnár’s “wise and beautiful” (New York Times) meditation on human limitation and the power of love.

CASTING NEWS:

Days to Come

by Lillian Hellman Directed by J.R. Sullivan The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd Street) August 2 through September 30 Tue - Sat 7:30PM Sat & Sun 2:00PM Wed 2:00PM: 9/5 Thur 2:00PM: 9/20 No perf: 9/8 2:00PM & 9/18 7:30PM

George Abud

Chris Reed Brown

Michael Frederic

Robert David Grant

Elise Kibler

Erica Knight

Alexa Shae Niziak

Thom Sesma

Michael Schantz

Sandra Shipley

Bobby Conte Thornton

Jennifer Van Dyck

Conflict

by Miles Malleson Directed by Jenn Thompson The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd Street) May 25 through July 21 Tue - Sat 7:30PM Sat & Sun 2:00PM Wed 2:00PM: 6/20 & 7/18

Call the FPC Hotline at: 212.315.0231

LILIOM CONTINUED...

Liliom in the #MeToo Era: An outdated relic or a vital provocation?

By Jesse Marchese I first came to Liliom through the musical Carousel. I was fascinated with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s landmark musical. There was a quality to it—an uncompromising darkness and seriousness of purpose—that made it stand out from the crowd. It seemed to me a bold entry in the often much-cheerier canon of American musical theatre.

Entranced with the story and its characters, I picked up a copy of the play on which the musical was based—Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom.

Reading the play affirmed for me the courage of what Rodgers and Hammerstein had done. It also introduced me to a piece that was even richer, more complex, and far darker than the musical it inspired. Liliom is an unlikely piece of source material for a musical.

Hewing close in form to the later expressionistic plays of Eugene O’Neill and Elmer Rice, the play follows Liliom, the carousel barker, into the afterlife where he contends Ferenc Molnár. Photo by Edward Steichen with the misguided choices that he made while alive. This proto-expressionistic quality baffled audiences when the play first premiered in Budapest in 1909. They were unprepared for a play so morally ambiguous in which a cad of a protagonist dies halfway through.

Despite the great success of the musical Carousel—a success which has seemingly eclipsed Liliom from American stages—the play continues to provoke. With its stark and unmoralizing depiction of domestic violence and a woman who stays, the play seems an unlikely fit for our current #MeToo era. Without a doubt, the #MeToo movement is an overdue and necessary moment of societal reckoning, and Liliom is a play that does not easily align with our current sympathies. Some may find the play too empathetic toward the violent figure at its center—others might see Julie as a regressive portrait of passive victimhood.

I, however, would argue that now is the perfect time for Liliom.

Our current national conversation longs for nuance and complexity. Liliom is a play that challenges audiences—but it also reminds us of the precarious nature of our shared humanity: our potential for kindness and meanness, spite and benevolence, violence and tenderness, ignorance and enlightenment. Liliom may not pander to our sensibilities, but that is exactly why it demands our attention.

Ferenc Molnár in rehearsal with actors.

Above all else, Liliom is about love and forgiveness. The play dares us to consider that even the most deeply flawed people are worthy of love and mercy. It asks us not to point a finger at Liliom, but to see him as ourselves. In a time as deeply divided as our own, Liliom is a vital provocation.

Monday, June 11 7:00PM Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd St $35: Regular Seating $100: Premium Seating and a post-show reception with the cast For more information or to reserve your place, call: 212.315.0231

DAYS TO COME ANNOUNCEMENT: Next up for the Mint will be Lillian Hellman’s 1936 drama Days to Come, directed by J.R. Sullivan. The play centers on a labor dispute at a factory in a small Ohio town where the owner naively fails to anticipate the disastrous impact that hiring strikebreakers will have on his community and his own life. Hellman describes the theme of Days to Come as “evil in the hands of people who don’t understand it.” Audiences barely had a chance to appreciate Days to Come, which closed after just six performances on Broadway. There has only been one production of New York after 1936, 40 years ago. More than a neglected curiosity by one of America’s greatest playwrights, Days to Come is a vital, complex play “about something real, something that matters,” as Harold Clurman described it, writing about the 1978 production for the Nation.

Directed by J.R. Sullivan

ABOUT LILLIAN HELLMAN: Lillian Hellman (1905-1984) was “very full of the most miraculous kind of contradictions,” as Jane Fonda observed when on playing the author in the 1977 film, Julia. Hellman persistently spoke her mind as one of America’s most celebrated playwrights and controversial icons. Hailed as a “dramatist of extraordinary strength and skill” (John Chapman, The New York Daily News), Hellman pursued questions of truth and deception, integrity and complicity throughout her life and plays, which included The Children’s Hour, The Little Foxes, Watch on the Rhine, The Autumn Garden and Watch on the Rhine.

August 2 - September 30

Tue - Sat 7:30PM, Sat & Sun 2:00PM No performance: Sat 9/8 at 2:00pm & Tue 9/18 at 7:30pm Added Matinees: Wed 9/5 at 2:00pm & Thu 9/20 at 2:00pm Tickets on sale now exclusively to FPC members! Call 212.315.0231.

FIRST PRIORITY CLUB NEWS BLACK ‘ELL and D COMPANY

Coming Soon!

Benefit Reading: Liliom

By Ferenc Molnár Directed by Jesse Marchese Monday, June 11, 7:00PM

By Miles Malleson

Directed by Matt Dickson

Monday, July 16 7:00PM in the Beckett Theatre During the World War I years, Malleson blended political activism with his rising career in the theatre. He became involved with the pacifist No-Conscription Fellowship, following his military service. Invalided from the army in January 1915, after serving briefly in Malta with the City of London Fusiliers, Malleson confronted the horror of a “world gone mad” in his one-act plays, ‘D’ Company and Black ‘ell. In October of 1916, the British government seized copies of both plays from the publisher and denounced them as “a deliberate calumny on the British solider.”

“What is fascinating about theses two British plays by Miles Malleson, is that they deal as much with class as war...the plays sound an astonishingly modern note.”

Michael Billington, The Guardian, 2003

For more information or to reserve your place, call 212.315.0231.

Further Reading: Black ‘Ell and D Company

By Miles Malleson Directed by Matt Dickson Monday, July 16, 7:00PM Days to Come

by Lillian Hellman Directed by J.R. Sullivan August 2 through September 30

Now playing!

Conflict

by Miles Malleson Directed by Jenn Thompson The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd Street) May 25 through July 21 Tue - Sat 7:30PM Sat & Sun 2:00PM Wed 2:00PM: 6/20 & 7/18

Call to reserve your tikcets: 212.315.0231

Photo by Todd Cerveris

from your friends at Mint Theater

Happy Summer! www.minttheater.org 212.315.0231 330 West 42nd Street Suite 1210 New York, NY 10036

May o ug h th r 1 July 2

25

Directed by Jenn Thompson

by Miles Malleson