Flyer- CONFLICT

May 25 – June 1 $45 June 2 – June 24 $50 June 26 – July 8 $55

BENEFIT READING!

REGULAR PRICE $65.00 $4.75 PER TICKET SERVICE CHARGE

APPLIES TO ALL PHONE AND ONLINE ORDERS.

LILIOM

By Ferenc Molnár Directed by Jesse Marchese

Monday, June 11 at 7pm | Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street Tickets: $35 or $100 for Premium Seating and a post-show reception with the cast.

Call 212.315.9434 for more information or to order tickets.

Before CAROUSEL, there was LILIOM:“One of the most exhilarating plays in the modern theater” Brooks Atkinson, New York Times Ferenc Molnár’s mystical drama charts Liliom’s ill-fated love-affair with a servant girl named Julie, and his attempt to recompense her in the afterlife.

LILIOM was a failure when first produced in Budapest in 1909—Molnár’s daring blend of gritty realism and poetic fantasy baffled audiences—but was a hit when revived there ten years later.In 1921,the play was produced on Broadway by the Theatre Guild. The production was a success, and 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. Though CAROUSEL remains the more oft-produced work, LILIOM provides its own unique rewards. Mint Theater is pleased to present Molnár’s “wise and beautiful” (New York Times) meditation on human limitation and the power of love.

CONFLICT IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY: The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

By public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

pa i d

May 25

through

July 21

Performances Begin MaY 25

Includes $2.25 restoration fee

by Miles Malleson

SAVE UP TO 30%! |CODE TRCNF

Theatre Row 410 West 42nd St, between 9th & 10th

ONLINE: TELECHARGEOFFERS.COM PHONE: 212-947-8844 IN PERSON: 410 WEST 42ND ST – 12-8 MON-SAT, 12-6 SUN PERFORMANCES: Tue-Sat at 7:30pm, Sat & Sun at 2:00pm Wed Matinee: 6/20 & 7/18 at 2:00pm

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Theatre Row | The Beckett Theatre 410 West 42nd St., between 9th & 10th MintTheater.org

Administrative Office 330 West 42nd St, Ste 1210 NY, NY 10036

May 25

by Miles Malleson

Directed by Jenn Thompson – with –

Jeremy Beck Jessie Shelton Henry Clarke Jasmin Walker Graeme Malcolm Amelia White James Prendergast Theatre Row | The beckett Theatre | 410 West 42nd St | MintTheater.org

enrichMINT events

A Biography of Miles Malleson

By Maya Cantu

As a playwright, screenwriter, director, producer, and character actor, Miles Malleson (18881969) 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.

by Miles Malleson CONFLICT is a love story set against the backdrop of a hotly contested election. Miles Malleson combines his two great passions: sex and politics. The result is a provocative romance that sizzles with both wit and ideas.

“Entertaining and Exciting.”

It’s the Roaring 20’s, London. Lady Dare Bellingdon has everything she could want, yet she craves something more. Dare’s man, Sir Major Ronald Clive, is standing for Parliament with the backing of Dare’s father. Clive is a Conservative, of course, but he’s liberal enough to be sleeping with Dare, who’s daring enough to take Clive as a lover, but too restless to marry him. Clive’s opponent, Tom Smith is passionate about social justice and understands the joy of having something to believe in. Dare is “the woman between” two candidates who both want to make a better world—until politics become personal, and mudslinging threatens to soil them all.

“Thoroughly Enjoyable.”

“I won’t say that it is necessary to be quite so good an actor as Miles Malleson to be a good playwright; but it is obviously a help. Mr. Malleson’s stage experience has enabled him not only to turn his economics to good conversational account, but to hinge excitingly dramatic situations upon them. His argument may not bring converts tumbling into the Socialist fold, but it should at least pave the way to sound and sensible discussion. He avoids political bigotry with the same dramatic skill; and though the play’s sympathies are left rather than right, he gives the old regime a sporting run. Politics are not the only string to his interestingly didactic bow. The other is Love. His frank handling of the relations between the sexes is again so cunning that it is the dramatic, rather than the debatable, aspect that engages one’s interest.”

The Observer, 1925

“An Excellent Entertainment.”

The play premiered in London in 1925, where critics heaped it with praise: “A skillfully and strongly written piece”, the dialogue “is neat and spare, always natural and often witty;” while complimenting “the expert way in which it is put together.”

CONFLICT was adapted for the movies in 1931, under the title The Woman Between (changed to The Woman Decides when an American movie with same title also was released in 1931).The picture was controversial; one critic wondered if British film production could “afford anything quite so offensive to the nation,” while another complained that it was “unnecessarily sexy”!

All events take place immediately after the performance and usually last about fifty minutes.

They are free and open to the public. Speakers and dates subject to change without notice.

“CONFLICT” IN CONTEXT: Professors Pedersen and Marshik will each discuss England in the early 1920’s, helping to put Malleson’s play into a historical and cultural context.

SATURDAY, JUNE 2, after the matinee:

In 1908, Malleson entered Emmanuel College at Cambridge, where he excelled in the Amateur Dramatic Club. A wildly successful practical joke—the impersonation of a conservative MP at Cambridge—set Malleson’s mind upon the professional stage. At Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s Academy, Malleson gained acting experience and wrote short plays. He soon eloped with the brilliant Lady Constance Annesley, an actress, writer, and rebel daughter of an Irish earl.

SUSAN PEDERSEN, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

During the World War I years, Malleson blended political activism with his rising career in the theatre. Both Miles and Constance moved among bohemian circles, joining movements in socialism, women’s suffrage, and causes of free love. They also became involved with the pacifist No-Conscription Fellowship, following Malleson’s 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.”

SATURDAY, JUNE 9, after the matinee:

Throughout the 1920s, Malleson led parallel lives as a classical actor and modern playwright.

His political comedies, including Conflict (1925) and The Fanatics (1927), balanced the playwright’s commitment to social reform with sparkling dialogue and nuanced craftsmanship.

Of Four People (1928), The Guardian praised “the play of a mind which is at war with usage and with institutions…and which can accept no sanctity of a social routine unless it justifies itself in human values.” At the same time, Malleson’s renown as “the best Shakespearean clown in the contemporary English theatre” (as described by St. John Ervine) led to roles in over a hundred films (including Kind Hearts and Coronets), as well as a distinguished career as a screenwriter. Also famous for his prose adaptations of Molière, Malleson died at the age of eighty on March 15, 1969.

“Behind the round spectacles and comically perched hat of the English character actor Miles Malleson churned the mind of an acute playwright…”The New Yorker Last year, Mint introduced theatergoers to the author Miles Malleson with our Critic’s Pick production of YOURS UNFAITHFULLY. “What is extraordinary about Mr. Malleson is his ability to create characters who are capable of feeling several things at once, or who don’t really know what they’re feeling at all,” The New York Times reported, while describing the comedy as “a bit like a sex farce with real sorrow instead of slammed doors, and something like a drawing room comedy with moral conundrums peeking out beneath the cushions.”

Susan Pedersen is the Gouverneur Morris Professor of History at Columbia. She specializes in British history, the British Empire, comparative European history, and international history. Pedersen founded a graduate training collaboration in Twentieth-Century British history with Guy Ortolano of NYU and Peter Mandler of Cambridge University.

CELIA MARSHIK, STONYBROOK UNIVERSITY Celia Marshik is Chair of the Department of English at Stonybrook. She is the author of “British Modernism and Censorship” (Cambridge University Press) and editor of “The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Culture”. Her teaching focuses on British modernism, the relationship between modernism and the middlebrow, and the literature and culture of World War I.

SUNDAY, JUNE 10, BRUNCH AT CHEZ JOSEPHINE 12:00

Brunch and performance $90. Use Code TRBRUNCH. For brunch only, call 212.315.9434

MY FATHER: MILES MALLESON ANDREW MALLESON Andrew Malleson, born 1931, is the son of Miles Malleson and his second wife, Joan Billson. Andrew will share stories of his childhood, talk about his father and share what it was like for him to see Conflict, as well as Yours Unfaithfully in 2017.

SATURDAY JUNE 16, after the matinee: “IT’S RATHER A WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS”: THE POLITICAL VISION OF MILES MALLESON MAYA CANTU, BENNINGTON COLLEGE Maya Cantu is on the Drama Faculty at Bennington and Dramaturgical Advisor to the Mint. She received a D.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama. Her book American Cinderellas on the Broadway Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from “Irene” to “Gypsy” is now available through Palgrave Macmillan.

John McDermott COSTUMES Martha Hally LIGHTS M.L. Geiger SOUND Toby Algya PROPS Chris Fields DIALECTS & DRAMATURGY Amy Stoller SETS

CASTING Stephanie

Klapper, CSA PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER Kelly Burns STAGE MANAGER Jeff Meyers ILLUSTRATION Stefano Imbert GRAPHICS hey jude design, inc.

PRESS David Gersten & Associates