AROUND THE WORLD - Newsletter October 14, 2013

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Around the World

by Orson Welles & Cole Porter

December 6th - 12th FPC Hotline: (212) 315-0231 Fax: (212) 977-5211 Address: 311 W. 43rd St. Suite 307 New York, NY 10036 Box Office: Mon.- Sat Noon-6pm Sun.- Noon-3pm (until 10/27) Only 8 Performances: Friday 12/6 at 8pm* Saturday 12/7 at 2pm & 8pm Sunday 12/8 at 2pm Tuesday 12/10 at 7pm Wednesday 12/11 at 2pm & 7pm Thursday 12/12 at 7pm * FPC Appreciation Night Full Price: $55 FPC Price: $38.50 (Use Code: FPC) www.minttheater.org

Join us for First-Priority Appreciation Night!

Attend our December 6, Opening Performance of AROUND THE WORLD and join us for a post-show reception.

Orson Welles and Cole Porter watching a run through of AROUND THE WORLD’s original production.

Courtesy LIFE Magazine.

Direct from the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London

Around the World

A Play With Music

by ORSON WELLES & COLE PORTER directed & produced by IAN MARSHALL FISHER

DECEMBER 6TH - 12TH “Wonderful, exciting, and funny” - Daily News, 1946 Direct from London, comes Lost Musical’s acclaimed production of this neglected musical by two theatrical giants—Orson Welles and Cole Porter.

AROUND THE WORLD is a Marx Brotherstype musical satire on the British…and everyone else. Based on Jules Verne’s classic novel, the story follows Phineas Fogg, who makes a bet to go ‘Around The World In Eighty Days’.

Welles’ madcap script shows off his incredible showmanship and comedic sense of fun, while Porter’s delightful score—which includes such songs as “There He Goes, Mr. Phineas Fogg,” “Pipe Dreaming,” and ”Should I Tell You I Love You?”—features his usual lyrical wit and melodic panache.

The production premiered on Broadway at the Adelphi Theatre on May 31, 1946, with a cast and crew of 150 people.

Orson Welles returned from Hollywood to Broadway as the writer, producer, director and star—advertising the show as a “Musical Extravaganza.” Indeed, the spectacular production boasted a giant mechanical elephant, an onstage train crash, fireworks, magic tricks, silent film clips, and an entire three ring circus.

The New York Post called AROUND THE WORLD “the most exciting musical in years.” While The New Yorker hailed, “It’s a damn good show, like nothing you’ve ever seen before.” When Robert Garland’s review in the World-Telegram mentioned that the show had “everything but the kitchen sink,” Orson, always eager to please, came to the footlights the next evening accompanied by a stagehand trundling out an enormous porcelain sink!

Although it initially played to packed houses, AROUND THE WORLD barely survived the summer doldrums and played to smaller and smaller audiences. Despite the obvious star-power provided by both

Cole Porter and Orson Welles, the show closed on August 3, 1946 after only 75 performances. Welles, who had helped finance the musical himself, lost $320,000 on the production. He had also borrowed money from Columbia Pictures president, Harry Cohn, on a promise to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no fee. He kept his promise, making the film The Lady from Shanghai the following year.

In 2007, London theater director Ian Marshall Fisher re-envisioned the show for a cast of 8 remarkably facilitated actors, accompanied by a lone piano, on the empty stage of the Lilian Baylis Studio at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre. “The wittily staged concert presentation of the show provides a tantalizing impression of what the prodigiously talented Welles had in mind,” wrote Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter, calling the production “great fun.”

This fall, there is a a return engagement of AROUND THE WORLD at the Sadler’s Wells in London. The production will then cross the Atlantic, providing American audiences the unique pleasure of seeing this neglected work by two of the greatest theatrical talents of the 20th century.

Mint Theater is proud to host the first ever American revival of AROUND THE WORLD, December 6-12, 2013.

British director Ian Marshall Fisher’s work has been based at London’s Barbican Centre, Royal Opera House, BBC and Sadler’s Wells. His specific interest is in American theatre writers. He also founded a project initially based at London’s Victoria and Albert Musuem titled Lost Musicals. He has lectured on his subject at Princeton and has founded a UK government education charity based on this subject.

FEBRUARY 1 THROUGH MARCH 30 Tickets on Sale Now

By

JOHN VAN DRUTEN Directed By

DAVIS McCALLUM

FPC Hotline: (212) 315-0231 Fax: (212) 977-5211 Address: 311 W. 43rd St. Suite 307 New York, NY 10036 Box Office: Mon.- Sat Noon-6pm Sun.- Noon-3pm (until 10/27) Performances: Tues., Wed., Thurs. 7pm Friday & Saturday 8pm Saturday & Sunday 2pm Wednesday Matinees: 2/19 & 3/12 No Performances: 2/18, 3/11 & 2/1 at 8pm Full Price: $55 FPC Price: $38.50 (Use Code: FPC) CheapTix: $27.50 (when available) www.minttheater.org

“A well-made and insightful play” Time Out London LONDON WALL by John Van Druten explores the lives and love affairs of the women employed as shorthand typists in a busy solicitor’s office in 1930’s London. The play made its premiere in May of 1931 at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London and was acclaimed for its hyper-realistic depiction of office life as well as its soulful probing of the dreams and desires of its female characters.

“An absolute charmer…charts the dilemmas of the single office girl with wry humor and rare insight.”

The Arts Desk

LONDON WALL recently received an acclaimed revival at London’s Finborough Theater: “It hasn’t been revived until now, yet comes up fresh as paint,” hailed Charles Spencer of The Telegraph, calling LONDON WALL “A piece that proves both dramatically engaging and a fascinating theatrical timecapsule.” Time Out called LONDON WALL “A smart indictment of the meagre circumference of a woman’s life as part of the urban workforce of the ’30s, wrapped around a heartfelt romantic drama.”

“Set in the 1930s, the extraordinary thing is that 80 years on, notwithstanding bursts of feminism, the Pill and loosening of social corsets in all directions, much of the discussion between its workers could still be transplanted to the present day. Lowly paid employees (more often than not female) still scurry, obeying a “lord and master” in fear of losing their jobs.

Talk over lunch and tea breaks is still of who is going out with whom, who may be near to getting their man to the altar, and who has just been jilted. It could be Mad Men but 20 years earlier.” The Arts Desk John Van Druten (1901-1957) was an English playwright and theater director. Born in London, he emigrated to the US in 1940 and became a naturalized citizen in 1944.

His many successes include I Remember Mama, Bell, Book, and Candle, Old Acquaintance, and I Am a Camera which, together with Christopher Isherwood’s novel, Goodbye to Berlin, formed the basis of the Broadway musical, Cabaret. He also holds claim to having written the 9th-longest running straight play in Broadway history, The Voice of the Turtle, which was revived in a co-production by Keen Company and Mint Theater in 2001.

John Van Druten and “The Way” to LONDON WALL In 1938, John Van Druten penned an autobiography called The Way to the Present concerning the years that went into making him a playwright. In the book, he discusses a conversation he had with his father at the age of sixteen: Father asked me what I wanted to do, and without hesitation I said: “Write,” to which he replied: “Well, I hope very much that you will, but you’ve got to have some other profession in the meantime that you can make a living at. What’s it to be?”

Recalling his older brother’s choice to study Law at Cambridge, Van Druten decided that “from the little I knew about it (which was almost nothing), it seemed as good a profession as any other with which to mark time.” That same year he became an articled clerk or “trainee solicitor” at a firm in London. Here he met many of the figures that would serve as inspiration to the characters drawn in his 1931 play, LONDON WALL: The firm was a very small one at that time, consisting only of the principal, a very able lawyer. There were also two or three shorthand typists, and a young man named Capps, who was office boy and managing clerk rolled into one...he was the most engaging person, a true Cockney, of enourmous friendliness and great efficiency, with a strictly limited but very powerful vocabulary of swearwords when he lost his temper. He knew no law, but a great deal concerning “the practice of it.”

In Capps one can see the seed from which the character of Birkinshaw, LONDON WALL’s “cheeky, grubby, Cockney office boy,” sprouts.

Van Druten continues to describe his lackluster experience at the firm, writing: There was none of the drama of litigation of which the uninitiated always imagine that a lawyer’s life is full.

Most of the practice concerned the formation of companies and the adjustment of Income Tax and Excess Profits Duty, to which my principal attended himself, and I had insufficient interest to try and follow him, even had that been possible.

This sentiment is humorously reflected in LONDON WALL when Birkinshaw offers to copy some of the “spicy” letters involved in a divorce case being handled by the firm: Well, a chap wants a bit of a change from leases and mortgages and landlord’s property tax. Ten blooming months have I been here, and not one juicy case ‘ave I seen yet. Might as well work for an undertaker.

In the memoir, Van Druten goes on to write: I seldom saw clients, although one or two of the madder ones, of whom there are always a couple haunting every lawyer’s office sometimes strayed into my path. The fictional LONDON WALL firm of Walker, Windermere, & Co, indeed has their own “mad” client in the character of Miss Willesden, who is described in the play as definitely cracked. Always starting actions. Always altering her will and adopting people...

There’s one like her in every lawyer’s office.

Jesse Marchese

We look forward to seeing you at Mint Theater’s “Further Reading” Series Presentation of

THE FATAL WEAKNESS

By George Kelly

Monday October 21st at 7pm Followed by a post-show talk with FOSTER HIRSCH THE FATAL WEAKNESS (1946), George Kelly’s last produced play, is a wise and witty adult comedy about the complications of married life. Even after 28 years of marriage, Mrs Espenshade is an incurable romantic (her fatal weakness). Perhaps discovering that her husband is a lying cheat will cure her? Mint’s “further reading” presentation will feature some of our favorite actors: Kristin Griffith (Mary Broome, The Charity That Began at Home, Milne at the Mint) Chris Mixon (Dr. Knock), and Patricia Kilgarriff (Mary Broome).

Haven’t reserved your seats yet? call (212) 315-0231 to be placed on the waiting list.

CCW from bottom left: Chris Mixon in Dr. Knock, photo by RIchard Termine; Kristin Griffith & Patricia Kilgarriff in Mary Broome, photos by Carol Rosegg.

“The most urbane and gracious achievement of a singular playwright” Foster Hirsch, author of George Kelly and our special guest speaker.

Dear Friends, Happy Fall!

This edition of your First-Priority Newsletter features information about two upcoming shows. In December we’re going to be hosting a group from the U.K. who will be presenting an adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days, written by Orson Welles and featuring a half-dozen songs by Cole Porter. The production, directed by Ian Marshall Fisher, will play in London for four performances at the Lilian Baylis Studio in the Sadler’s Wells Theater and will then travel to New York.

We are pleased to play host to our friends from London, and especially pleased to be able to offer you this rare piece, which I hope will be great fun.

We’re setting aside the first night, Friday December 6th as “First-Priority Appreciation Night.” After the show that evening we’ll have a little party here in our lobby where you can meet the cast and mingle with other Mint “Club” members. If you want to see this show and that’s not a convenient night for you, there will be seven other performances—you’ll find details inside the newsletter.

Thank you for your continued support and interest. I hope to see you soon!

FIRST PRIORITY CLUB FPC Hotline: (212) 315-0231 Fax: (212) 977-5211 Address: 311 W. 43rd St. Suite 307 New York, NY 10036 Box Office: Mon.- Sat Noon-6pm Sun.- Noon-3pm (until 10/27)

Best wishes,

Jonathan

first priority club news www.minttheater.org (212) 315-0231 311 West 43rd Street, Suite # 307 New York, NY 10036