Echoes of the War

MTC-ECHOESflyer

6/11/04

7:17 PM

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★ECHOES OF THE WAR★

Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director presents

SURROUND EVENTS Discussions last approximately 50 minutes and can be attended by all Mint patrons to any performance of Echoes of the War free of charge.

The Stage Women’s War Relief Fund (1917)

TWO SHORT (and sweet) PLAYS

BY J.M. BARRIE DIRECTED BY

ELEANOR REISSA With

Sets Vicki R. Davis

Mary Ellen Ashley Anne-Marie Cusson Richard Easton Aaron Krohn Katherine McGrath Pat Nesbit Gareth Saxe Frances Sternhagen Jenny Strassberg

Lights Traci Klainer Costumes Debra Stein Props Judi Guralnick Sound Bruce Ellman Casting Sharron Bower Dialects Amy Stoller Stage Manager Jana Llynn

July 6th - August 22ND Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday at 7:00 Friday & Saturday at 8:00 ★ Saturday and Sunday at 2:00

Press Representative David Gersten & Associates Flyer Jude Dvorak

TO ORDER TICKETS CALL (212) 315-0231 OR VISIT OUR ON-LINE BOX OFFICE: WWW.MINTTHEATER.ORG

★ PERFORMANCES AT THE MINT THEATER 311 W. 43RD ST. 5TH FLOOR ★

Frances Sternhagen recently appeared in Talking Heads Off-Broadway, for which she received an Outer Critics Circle Award. Before that, she appeared in Morning’s at Seven on Broadway, for which she received a Tony nomination.

Nominated seven times for a Tony Award, she has received it twice, for The Good Doctor and The Heiress.

Richard Easton last appeared with Ms. Sternhagen playing John Worthing to her Gwendolyn in The Importance of Being Earnest in 1960. He received the 2001 Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his performance in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love.

Mr. Easton played the title role in the 2004 Tony winning revival of Henry IV at Lincoln Center.

Join Professor J. Ellen Gainor of Cornell University on Saturday July 10th following the matinee (or prior to the evening performance) for a stimulating discussion of J. M. Barrie and the last New York production of Echoes of the War. Gainor is the author of The Plays of Susan Glaspell: A Contextual Study. She holds degrees from Harvard and Princeton Universities and the Yale School of Drama.

Echoes of the War - A discussion on Barrie and World War I era drama Martin Meisel, Brander Matthews Professor of Dramatic Literature Emeritus at Columbia University, will lead a discussion on the drama of J. M. Barrie and his contemporaries. Professor Meisel is the author of Shaw and 19th Century Theater and Realisations: Narrative, Pictorial and Theatrical Arts in 19th Century England.

Please check our website for additional events.

I ordered tickets for ECHOES OF THE WAR for__________2004 @ _____pm. Paid By: ❏ Visa/MC ❏ Check #________ The Mint Theater is located at 311 West 43rd Street, 5th floor (Please keep for your records)

PERFORMANCES: TUESDAY-WEDNESDAY-THURSDAY AT 7PM, FRIDAY-SATURDAY AT 8PM & SATURDAY-SUNDAY AT 2PM $35 for performances July 6th – July 17th

$45 for performances July 20th – August 15th

How to purchase your tickets for ECHOES OF THE WAR: ★ By Mail (or) In-Person: Mint Theater Company (No Service Charges) 311 West 43rd Street, 5th floor New York, NY 10036 ★ By Phone: (212) 315-0231 ($2.50 per ticket service charge will apply) ★ On-line: www.minttheater.org (No Service Charges) ★ Groups of 15 or more: 212-315-9434 (ask for Ted Altschuler) DATE

TIME

BOX OFFICE HOURS Monday thru Saturday 12-6pm Box Office hours will expand July 6 NO LATE SEATING Policy Strictly Enforced!

All tickets will be HELD at the Box Office and are available for pick-up ONE HOUR prior to curtain.

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MTC-ECHOESflyer

6/11/04

7:18 PM

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“Written with rare art and infinitely appealing... …heartbreakingly tender and true.”

Alexander Woollcott, The New York Times, 1917

TWO SHORT (and sweet) PLAYS

BY J.M. BARRIE “The irony of J.M. Barrie’s career is that his most famous and most frequently performed play, Peter Pan, probably the greatest children’s play ever written, has prevented him from being taken seriously as a major dramatist.” R.L. Green

Two short (and sweet) plays by J.M. Barrie The Old Lady Shows Her Medals and The New Word “A masterpiece of its kind, profound in its sense of character and vital in its absolute realism.”

It certainly hasn’t prevented the Mint from taking him quite seriously. Beginning July 6th, New York’s most “reliable discoverer of lost dramatic works worthy of our attention,” will present ECHOES OF THE WAR, an evening of two of Barrie’s most charming and poignant one-act plays, first presented in New York in 1917.

The New York Evening Post, 1917

Mint Theater Company, “that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past,” has a celebrated reputation for excavating such worthy but neglected treasures as Far and Wide, and D.H. Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law, nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play and named one of the top ten productions of the year by The New York Times.

Please join us for J.M. (Peter Pan) Barrie’s touching and timely plays about mothers and sons and fathers and sons featuring Frances Sternhagen and Richard Easton, two of New York’s most esteemed stage actors.

Leading the cast of nine will be two of New York’s most esteemed and acclaimed stage actors, Frances Sternhagen and Richard Easton. Ms. Sternhagen made her first appearance on Broadway nearly 50 years ago and has received seven Tony nominations, most recently in 2002 for her performance in Mornings at Seven. She has received the award twice: in 1973 for The Good Doctor and in 1995 for The Heiress. Mr. Easton made his first appearance on Broadway in 1958; most recently he played the title role in the much-acclaimed Lincoln Center production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Mr. Easton received a TonyAward for his performance in The Invention of Love.

Ms. Sternhagen will take the title role in The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, a sparkling gem considered to be one of the finest examples of a one-act play ever written.

With gentle humor it tells the story of a lonely London charwoman who feels even lonelier when the Great War begins. “It was everybody’s war except mine,” she despairs, so she lies about having a son at the front and pretends that he sends her letters, a ruse she gets away with until the day he arrives on her doorstep. In 1917 Alexander Woollcott of The New York

Times described The Old Lady… as “an appeal to every heart in the house…touching and true and pure Barrie from beginning to end.” The Old Lady… was performed at the Shaw Festival in 2002 where one critic wrote, “Barrie creates such a complete emotional bond with the audience that its forty minutes have a depth and effect beyond many a full-length play.”

“A perfect thing written by a master craftsman.”

Mr. Easton will take the lead in The New Word, described by Woollcott in 1917 as “a perfect thing written by a master craftsman… You witness it with such a persistent lump in your throat that you are unlikely to notice with what canny and thrifty skill, with what consummate art it has been written.

It watches an English father trying for once in his life and for just one farewell hour to break through the embarrassed and ancient British reserve between himself and his son, determined as he is, that the khaki-clad boy of 19 shall not get off to the trenches without his father finding words somewhere for the emotion with which his heart is charged and his lips are twitching.”

Barrie published these two plays in 1919 (along with two others) under the collective title Echoes of the War, which gives our production its name. They received their New York premieres in 1917 as part of a triple bill of Barrie—“Three new Barrie plays in a single program is riches beyond description,” wrote the Times, “and two of them are Barrieisms of purest ray serene, two little war plays written with rare art and infinitely appealing.” Barrie writes of mother and son, of father and son, with tender intimacy and insight. His concerns are human and not political; his approach is humorous and his genius is exquisite sympathy.

Echoes of the War will demonstrate how much more there is to love and appreciate about J.M. Barrie than Peter Pan, just as The Truth About Blayds and Mr. Pim Passes By showed New York theatergoers that A.A. Milne was so much more than the author of Winnie-the-Pooh. Don’t miss out on the summer’s most beautifully touching theatrical surprise.

JAMES MATHEW BARRIE (1860-1937) If J. M. Barrie had only written Peter Pan, its extraordinary and enduring popularity would testify to his talents as a dramatist.

As it is, Peter Pan, which celebrates its 100-year anniversary this year, now only obscures Barrie’s gifts as a dramatist of significance.

In his lifetime, Barrie was much admired by his peers and even regarded as a genius, however his work fell out of favor in later years. His full length plays include Quality Street, The Admirable Crichton, What Every Woman Knows, Dear Brutus and Mary Rose. One-act plays include The Twelve-Pound Look, The Will and A WellRemembered Voice among many others.

During WWI, Barrie devoted himself to raising funds for various charities and war efforts. The proceeds from the 1917 New York run of The New Word and The Old Lady Shows Her Medals were donated in their entirety to the Stage Woman’s War Relief Fund, the organization that went on to become The American Theatre Wing.

The Times reported that this was “the first time in the annals of the local stage that the profits of an entire engagement have been devoted to charity.”

When Barrie died, The New York Times obituary called him “one of the least wellknown great men of his time.”

BY J.M. BARRIE Starring FRANCES STERNHAGEN and RICHARD EASTON 311 W. 43 RD STREET★ 5 TH FLOOR ★ NEW YORK, NY 10036 www.minttheater.org Permit No. 7528 New York, NY

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