Fashions for Men

New York, NY Pe r m i t N o . 7 5 2 8

RESERVED SEATING: $55

pa i d

AT THE MINT THEATER, 311 WEST 43RD ST, 3RD FLOOR

non - profit u . s . postage

866-811-4111 or minttheater.org FEBRUARY 3 THROUGH MARCH 29

PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

MANAGING DIRECTOR

JONATHAN BANK

JEN SOLOWAY

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Tue, Wed & Thu at 7pm Fri & Sat at 8pm, Sat & Sun at 2pm Wed. Matinee: 2/18, 2/25 & 3/25 at 2pm No performances: 2/17, 3/1, 3/24

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MONDAY FEBRUARY 23rd at 7:00

A Special One Night Only Reading of LILIOM By Ferenc Molnár “One of the most exhilarating plays in the modern theater”

By

“A wise and beautiful play” Alexander Woollcott, New York Times

Ferenc Molnar

Brooks Atkinson, New York Times

Liliom is a mystical comedy, the story of a carousel barker and his ill-fated love affair with a servant girl. Today, Liliom is best known as the source for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.

Tickets $25. Free for Members of the First-Priority Club

DirectedBy

Davis McCallum

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Michael Schantz Maren Searle John Seidman Jill Tanner John Tufts Gabra Zackman

Sets Daniel Zimmerman Costumes Martha Hally Lights Eric Southern Original Music & Sound Jane Shaw Props Joshua Yocom Casting Judy Bowman Dramaturg Maya Cantu Production Stage Manager Allison Deutsch Assistant Stage Manager Jeff Meyers Illustration Stefano Imbert Graphics Hey Jude Design, Inc. Advertising The Pekoe Group Press David Gersten & Associates

FEBRUARY 3 THROUGH MARCH 29

866-811-4111 or minttheater.org THIS PRODUCTION IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY: An award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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.

FASHIONS FOR MEN is a comedy of character by Ferenc Molnár, set in a highclass haberdashery in Budapest (serving both men and women). The shop’s owner, Peter Juhasz, is a saintly beacon of decency who only sees the good in everyone—making him easy prey for the sinners who surround him. When his wife steals his last dollar and runs off with his top salesman, Peter is on his own, facing bankruptcy. Will he wise up and learn to protect himself from those who would take advantage of his goodness? Or will he persist in seeing the world through the rose-colored lens of his own compassion?

“

comedy as fine and true as maternal devotion and as gentle as June sunshine after a rain.”

The Evening Mail

The play was first produced at Budapest’s National Theater in 1917. In 1922 it appeared on Broadway. The New York Times praised the play as “a comedy of indescribable freshness and authenticity of character” that revealed “a fresh phase of [Molnár’s] versatile genius.”

“

novel combination of continental sophistication and sentimental comedy, deft and amusing.”

The New York Globe

While nearly every review considered the production a success, critics struggled to make sense of the play’s remarkable central character. Was Peter Juhasz a man of saintly goodness, or a docile fool? Descriptions of Molnár’s protagonist ranged from “unworldly” and “benevolent” to “incompetent” and “pathetic.” The Evening Mail called Juhasz “one of the most lovable persons the theater has given us in a long time,” while Alexander Woollcott of The New York Herald confided that he “wished he would fall down and break his neck.”

John Corbin of The New York Times had a better grasp on the playwright’s intent.

He described the shopkeeper as “a character conceived with the most exquisite grace of sympathy.” Corbin wrote a second piece criticizing his fellow critics: “Here they have a play which presents the human comedy of sainthood with an art of realism as finely true as Liliom was free and fantastic—and they seem sorely perplexed what to make of it…The spirit of human kindness exists in human nature, says Ferenc Molnár, so let us consider it in quite normal surroundings—what it is like and what happens to it…never has character been more freshly sensed in the theatre or more keenly observed.”

“

olnár draws simple characters with enviable grace and sees the world through their eyes humorously.”

Brooks Atkinson, New York Times

enrichMINT events ENRICHMINT EVENTS ARE SUPPORTED IN PART

BY A GRANT FROM THE MICHAEL TUCH FOUNDATION.

FERENC MOLNÁR

By Maya Cantu

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár rose to international acclaim with his cosmopolitan fairy tales for adults. Molnár’s plays inventively blended romantic fantasy and sardonic wit; pointed social satire and polished theatricality. Best known today for the mystical folk play Liliom (1922; the basis of the classic musical Carousel), Molnár was immensely prolific as a journalist, short story writer, novelist, and the author of forty-two plays, many of which were performed widely throughout Europe and America.

Born as Ferenc Neumann on January 12, 1878, to a middle-class Hungarian-Jewish family, Molnár grew up amid the elegant milieu of Habsburg-era Budapest. The writer achieved international fame in 1907, with the publication of A Pál utcai fiúk (The Paul Street Boys), his classic novel of Budapest street gangs, as well as the sensational success of his play Az ördög (The Devil). A risqué supernatural comedy of intrigue, the play had four simultaneous productions in New York City alone.

Molnár’s theatrical career flourished throughout the next decade. The Hungarian premieres of Liliom (1909), A Testor (The Guardsman, 1910)) and A Farkas (The Tale of the Wolf; 1912) were followed by productions of these plays in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, among other European cities.

Following WWI, Molnár earned both popular affection and critical renown as “the best-known living Continental playwright in America” (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle).

In 1921, Liliom marked a monumental success for the Theatre Guild, who also mounted the legendary 1924 production of The Guardsman, a comedy of marital roleplaying starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne.

While stage productions (as well as many Hollywood film adaptations) of Molnár plays appeared regularly into the 1930s, the rise of Nazism impelled the playwright’s 1940 emigration to the United States, where he lived in a room at New York’s Plaza Hotel. Still a theatrical institution in America and Europe (though banned in Communist Hungary), the playwright died after a long illness in New York in 1952, survived by his third wife, actress Lili Darvas.

Over half a century later, the writer of plays designed with “romantic imagination and colorful sophistication” (Associated Press), and crafted with “virtuoso skill” (The New York Times), Ferenc Molnár elegantly returns to the stage with FASHIONS FOR MEN.

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.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7 after the matinee: MAYA CANTU THEATER HISTORIAN AND DRAMATURG Maya Cantu is a theater historian, scholar and dramaturg devoted to the revitalization of forgotten classics.

She recently completed her Doctor of Fine Arts degree in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama. Maya is Mint Theater’s Dramaturgical Advisor and the author of the Ferenc Molnár biography that appears in our program and flyer.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8 after the matinee: IVAN SANDERS PROFESSOR OF HUNGARIAN LITERATURE AND SLAVIC LANGUAGES, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Budapest-born Ivan Sanders is Professor Emeritus of English at Suffolk Community College, and Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University, where he teaches courses in modern Hungarian literature and cinema.

He has translated many modern and contemporary Hungarian novels, short fiction, and essays into English.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 15 after the matinee: ISTVAN L. VARKONYI AUTHOR OF FERENC MOLNÁR AND THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN “FIN DE SIÈCLE” Istvan Varkonyi is Associate Professor of German in the Department of French, German, Italian, and Slavic at Temple University. Dr. Varkonyi has been a recipient of two German Academic Exchange Commission (DAAD) Fellowships as well as two Fulbright Research Fellowships. He received his Ph.D. in German Language and Literature from Washington University, St. Louis.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18 after the matinee: ELIZABETH RAJEC AUTHOR OF FERENC MOLNÁR: BIBLIOGRAPHY Elizabeth Rajec is the author of a comprehensive, two-volume Bibliography on the work of Ferenc Molnár.

As a Fulbright scholar, she conducted her research on the playwright in Budapest, Vienna and New York.

She received her master’s and doctorate degrees in Germanic language and literature from CUNY— where she also taught courses in literature and library science.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21 after the matinee: JAMES LEVERETT PROFESSOR OF DRAMATURGY AND DRAMATIC CRITICISM, YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA James Leverett is an expert in European theater of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has worked as a dramaturg at the Mark Taper Forum, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Theatre for a New Audience, Berkshire Theatre Festival, and New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1988, he received the first Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas Award for service to the field.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22 after the matinee: AGNES NIEMETZ HUNGARIAN TRANSLATOR AND INTERPRETER, HUNGARIAN TRANSLATION SERVICES Agnes Niemetz is the founder of Hungarian Translation Services in NYC. Ms. Niemetz acted as Hungarian Language consultant on our production of FASHIONS FOR MEN. She will join Artistic Director Jonathan Bank to discuss both Glazer’s English translation of the play and Molnár’s original Hungarian script, Uri Divat.