HINDLE WAKES BY STANLEY HOUGHTON DIRECTED BY GUS KAIKKONEN
“Few other plays explore so unflinchingly the profound, and profoundly English, connection between sex, money, and class… Still packs a powerful punch.” The Sunday Times (1998)
Hindle Wakes
by Stanley Houghton Directed by Gus Kaikkonen The Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd Street) December 22, 2017 through February 17, 2018 Tue - Sat 7:30PM Sat & Sun 2:00PM Wed 2:00PM: 1/17 & 2/14
Tickets on sale now to First Priority Club Members. Call the FPC Hotline at: 212.315.0231 Further Reading:
The Younger Generation By Stanley Houghton
Monday, February 5, 2018 7:00PM at the Clurman Theatre Call the FPC Hotline at: 212.315.0231
It’s “wakes week” in Hindle; the mill is closed and the workers are idle. Fanny Hawthorn is relaxing at the seashore with a girlfriend when she runs into Alan Jeffcote, the mill owner’s son. Alan takes Fanny to an hotel in Wales for a few days of fun, but the fun stops when their parents find out. Of course, Alan should marry Fanny, the fathers agree—no matter that Alan is engaged already. Must Alan do the right thing and make an honest woman of Fanny, or must he do the right thing and stand by his fiancé? Hindle Wakes mixes questions of ethics, class, custom and morals into an effervescent fizz of comic realism. “It is not extravagant to say, that Hindle Wakes is one of the best plays of modern times.” Theatre Magazine (1922) Hindle Wakes is a sly morality tale, sliced out of real life, but “it is life mixed with something, or fermented into something, more exhilarating than the real thing,” wrote the Guardian’s famed critic C.E. Montague, in reviewing a 1924 revival of the play. “Seen last night after an interval of some ten years, the play struck us as an even better comedy than we had felt it to be in its youth…Houghton was surely born with the right touch for a dramatist, and it will be surprising if Hindle Wakes does not keep a permanent place on the stage.” Montague’s prediction has proven true in England, however, Hindle Wakes has not been seen in New York for 95 years.
Welcome Back, Gus! We are pleased to welcome Gus Kaikkonen back to the Mint, as the director of Hindle Wakes. Gus began his association with the Mint as an actor in 1998 in our production of Edith Wharton's dramatization of her novel, The House of Mirth. In 1999, he directed The Voysey Inheritance by Harvey Granville Barker, the production that proved to be a true "game-changer" for the Mint. Voysey was the show that proved that there might just be support for the idea of producing old plays that no one had ever heard of. Here's a list of some of the productions Gus has directed for us: The Voysey Inheritance (1999) The Charity that Began at Home (2002) The Madras House (2007) Dr. Knock or the Triumph of Medicine (2010) A Picture of Autumn (2013) Donogoo (2014)
Gus has also stepped into a few of our productions as an actor. Here’s a picture of Gus rehearsing the role of Willie Gregson in A Day by the Sea with George Morfogen, whom Gus has directed at the Mint five times. Gus went on with four hours notice, and played the last ten performances.
HINDLE WAKES BY STANLEY HOUGHTON DIRECTED BY GUS KAIKKONEN
CASTING NEWS: MINT ALUMNI Recognize some of these faces? We are delighted to welcome back three Mint alumni to the cast of Hindle Wakes. Don’t miss these Mint favorites - call 212.315.0231 to buy your FPC ticket today!
Katie Firth and Jill Tanner in A Day by the Sea by N.C. Hunter (July - October 2016)
JILL TANNER
Sara Surrey and Sandra Shipley in Rutherford & Son by Githa Sowerby (September - October 2001)
SANDRA SHIPLEY
Jonathan Hogan and Elise Kibler in London Wall by John Van Druten (February - April 2014)
JONATHAN HOGAN THE REST OF THE CAST...
JEREMY BECK
REBECCA NOELLE BRINKLEY
EMMA GEER
SARA CAROLYNN KENNEDY
KEN MARKS
Tickets on sale now exclusively to FPC members! Call: 212.315.0231
BRIAN REDDY
STANLEY HOUGHTON By Maya Cantu
An industrious playwright from Manchester, Stanley Houghton (1881-1913) “startled England with the brilliant originality of his comedies of Lancashire life” (The New York Times). Blending truthfully observed realism with shrewd comic grit and “supremely sophisticated dexterities” (The Manchester Guardian), Houghton wrote over a dozen plays, many of which called for women’s sexual and economic freedom. Born on February 22, 1881 in the town of Ashton-upon-Mersey, Cheshire, William Stanley Houghton moved as a child to bustling Manchester, where his father thrived as a cotton merchant. After graduating from Manchester Grammar School, Houghton entered his father’s business as a commercial clerk, but devoted most of his spare hours to the theater. As an amateur actor, Houghton appeared in dozens of roles with the Manchester Athenaeum Dramatic Society, while writing one-act plays. In 1905, he was hired to write stage reviews for The Manchester City News, and soon after became assistant drama critic for The Manchester Guardian. Under the aegis of theater manager Annie Horniman, Houghton decisively picked up his playwright’s pen. With the vibrant, socially engaged plays of the Gaiety Theatre, founded in 1908 as the first repertory company in Great Britain, the London-born “Miss Horniman invaded Manchester and captured it with her army of ideas” (The New York Sun). Houghton’s first one-act play at the Gaiety, the astringent domestic satire The Dear Departed (1908), revealed the playwright’s “capital sense of theatrical values” (The Guardian).
A caricature by Max Beerbohm of "Stanley Houghton taking his place among the leading dramatists of England" as it was originally captioned. Included are Harley Granville-Barker, John Masefield, Shaw, John Galsworthy, Alfred Sutro, Arthur Wing Pinero, J.M. Barrie, and Henry Arthur Jones.
Over the next four years at the Gaiety, Houghton made consistent progress as a playwright. With his first full-length play, Independent Means (1908), Houghton introduced the free-thinking “woman of ideas” that animated his work. He also stimulated Manchester audiences with The Younger Generation (1910), which The Guardian called “a veracious and highly amusing piece of social satire” in which “the realism is delightful.” The Gaiety’s 1912 London premiere of Hindle Wakes at the Incorporated Stage Society, and then Coronet Theatre, launched Houghton as one of the preeminent young dramatists of his generation, while setting off a shockwave of controversy. Tragically, only a year and a half after Hindle Wakes, Houghton died of meningitis on December 11, 1913, at the age of 32.
THE YOUNGER GENERATION By Stanley Houghton Monday, February 5 7:00PM Clurman Theatre
FURTHER READINGS A READING SERIES THAT FURTHER EXPLORES THE WORK OF OUR FAVORITE PLAYWRIGHTS
Free for members of the First Priority Club. Call 212.315.0231 to reserve your tickets. It's the age-old story of rebellious youth and repressive parents, kept remarkably fresh by Houghton's plain speaking and light touch--and by the fact that hardly anything at all has changed in the hundred-plus years since this comedy was first written. The delight the play offers is due, not only to the universality of its topic, but also "the author's fairness and common sense, his general veracity, and not least, his eye for humorous detail.” Houghton is "a writer with a keen sense of humor who uses it it freely to make us laugh--and to laugh with all the better conscience because with our laughter goes a comfortable if vague notion that it is not unaccompanied by thought," as described by The Times, 1912. All production photos by Richard Termine.
Dear Friends,
Jonathan
Performances: Tue - Sat 7:30PM Sat & Sun 2:00PM Wed 2:00PM: 1/17 & 2/14
Reserve your FPC Tickets now! FPC Hotline: 212.315.0231
330 West 42nd Street Suite 1210 New York, NY 10036
I look forward to seeing you soon!
HINDLE WAKES by Stanley Houghton Directed by Gus Kaikkonen December 22 - February 17
www.minttheater.org 212.315.0231
I’m especially pleased to be welcoming back director Gus Kaikkonen, and reuniting him with Jonathan Hogan and Jill Tanner, actors who were in the cast of A Picture of Autumn, which Gus directed for us in 2013. This edition of our newsletter will introduce you to the full cast. I hope you’ll order your tickets soon, before the holiday season descends on us all. For a little while longer, tickets are available exclusively to you, our valued members of the First Priority Club.
Coming Soon!
Happy fall!
Coming next, with performances beginning at the end of December, will be Hindle Wakes, a play that’s been “on my list” for many years. In fact, almost exactly ten years ago, the Times did a feature story on the Mint in the Sunday Arts & Leisure section, and in that article, I promised a production of this wonderful play by Stanley Houghton. I don’t know why it took me so long to bring it to you—I know you’re going to love it.
FIRST PRIORITY CLUB NEWS
from your friends at Mint Theater
Fall is finally in the air (my favorite season) and before we know it winter will be here.