The Return of the Prodigal

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BRADFORD C YN TANDY CRON Y LEAH CURNE S ROBIN HAYNE ILL RODERICK H INE RICHARD KL KATE LEVY ELTHAU W. ALAN NEB DETT CECELIA RID ITE MARGOT WH

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OS LINT RAM C S E M U T S O SETS & C O L E AU YLER MIC L IG H T S T N E S H AW S O U N D JA IELLO I G NA P O L A R C R E N IG RD, SET DES A RT H OWA T U T A S S O C IAT E S G IN T S CA RD & PAU L H A R E T C E H SE C AMY S OT H Y C R U M I K R E G A N A I AT E S N S TAG E M N & ASSOC P RO D U C T IO E T S R E G AV I D DVO R A K N TAT IV E D S JUDE E S IC E H R P P A E R R G S

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W W W : E D FLOOR FIC TREET, 3R S E BOX OF D IN R L 3 4 N T O S E R R 311 W OR VISIT OU T THEATE IN M T A S E PERFORMANC

THE POWER OF DARKNESS

by Leo Tolstoy

CO NE 9 SATURDAY, JU RICIA DENISON, BARNARD , T A ricia Denison PROFESSOR P raries with Pat a book on po g em in nt sh ni co fi s y hi

“THE POWER OF DARKNESS rends the air with greatness.” -The Spectator, 1984 This play was written in 1886 but was banned in Russia where it was not produced until 1895—after Tolstoy satisfied the censor and agreed to provide an alternative for the play’s most powerful and horrific scene. The play is virtually unknown in this country; its first New York production was in Yiddish (in 1904). It was another 16 years before the fledgling Theater Guild finally presented the play in English.

The last time THE POWER OF DARKNESS was seen in New York was in 1959 when Brooks Atkinson called the play “unforgettable…a devastating chronicle of corruption and penitence on a peasant farm in the 1880’s.”

Mint Theater Company is the proud recipient of a $100,000 grant from the Tony Randall Theatrical Fund to support the production of this forgotten play by one of the world’s greatest writers.

Mint was chosen from among 45 candidates by a selection d entl of Hankin an committee including Jed Bernstein, Steve Buscemi, rd. She is curr na ar B at e A discussion ur Literat drama. ic sh at ti Charles Busch, Michael Cerveris, Cherry Jones, Jack Klugman, m ri B ra D y ur of nt h ce Professor Michael Mastro, Marian Seldes, Gary Springer, Ben Vereen. late-nineteent d an o er in P .

Arthur W g the matinee SYLVANNIA TH followin 0 1 Y OF PENN E T N SI U FIRST PRIORITY CLUB MEMBERS ONLY: R J E , Y IV A N SUND LES, U contains RALD WEA ch E Order your tickets today! 212-315-0231 hi G w R ,” O ys la SS P PROFE y: “Edwardian SE. og Performances September 5th thru October 21st.

U ol O th H an S e A th R D A editor of t first.

L and THE M For more information about joining the mances sell ou Weales is the E PRODIGA H ussion perfor more information T sc F di O w ho N -s R st r Po fo First-Priority Club call 212-315-0231.

31 02 5s. both RETU at 31 ur se l 212or to book yo

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$25 for under 25!

$35 FOR PERFORMANCES MAY 23 – MAY 27 $45 FOR PERFORMANCES MAY 29 – JUNE 10 $55 FOR PERFORMANCES JUNE 12 – JULY 8 Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday at 7pm Friday-Saturday at 8pm & Saturday-Sunday at 2pm

• By Mail or In-Person: Mint Theater Company (No Service Charges) 311 West 43rd Street, Ste. #307 New York, NY 10036

Anyone under 25 can now order $25 tickets in advance—over the phone, online or in person!

(Limit one ticket per ID. Proof of age will be required when you pick up your tickets)

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How to purchase your tickets for THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL

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Now thru May 18

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Monday - Friday 12-6 pm

• By Phone: (212) 315-0231 ($2.50 per ticket service charge will apply)

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Beginning May 22

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2nd Choice KESY CHARLIE MAC PAINTING BY E PRODIGAL” (2000) “BLU ESY.COM RLIEMACK WWW.CHA

COMING TO THE MINT IN SEPTEMBER:

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1st Choice

KETS CALL TO ORDER TIC

31 (212) 315-02

ely st approximat Discussions la the public to en d are op 50 minutes an . free of charge

3rd Choice

Time

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$35 May 23 – May 27 $45 May 23 – June 10 $55 June 12 – July 8 $25 (I will bring photo ID when I pick up my tickets)

I am also including a tax-deductible contribution

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“LIKE GRANVILLE BARKER AT HIS BEST, HANKIN WROTE ADULT PLAYS FOR ADULT PEOPLE.” -Financial Times.

BY: ST. JOHN ANKIN

H BY: ST. JOHN THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL is a “blistering expose of middle-class life, laced with acid humor.”

The prodigal of the title is Eustace Jackson, the son of a wealthy manufacturer. Five years earlier Eustace was packed off to Australia to make his fortune, but he only succeeds at failing in everything he attempts.

Desperate and destitute, he returns home uninvited to the bosom of his family who had so fondly hoped they were rid of him for good.

“ST. JOHN HANKIN IS ONE OF THE GREAT MIGHT-HAVE-BEENS OF THE BRITISH THEATRE.” -Sunday Times

“St. John Hankin is one of the great mighthave-beens of the British theatre.”

- Sunday Times

material for wonderfully fertile comic invention, in which ironic plotting is reinforced with paralysingly funny one-liners.”

Five-years ago Mint Theater introduced New York audiences to an extraordinary British playwright named St. John Hankin. Hankin wrote five full-length plays between 1903 and his death by suicide at the age of 40 in 1909. Only one of them has ever been seen in New York—THE CHARITY THAT BEGAN AT HOME—produced by the Mint in 2002 (“Layered and surprisingly rich” The New York Times).

y called la p a e r tu ic P “ ORTANCE

“Like Granville Barker at his best, Hankin wrote adult plays for adult people,” writes the Financial Times. Hankin, along with Granville Barker and Shaw, helped further the revolution that returned the function of social criticism to drama. Granville Barker dedicated his first published volume of plays in 1909 “To the memory of my fellow-worker, St. John Hankin.”

MINT THEATER COMPANY: LOST PLAYS FOUND HERE The award-winning Mint has brought you lost treasures such as: The Madras House, Susan and God, The Daughter-in-Law, and Echoes of the War.

HANKIN

The Guardian calls Hankin, “the forgotten man of Edwardian drama,” and describes THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL as “a delightful discovery…This is social comedy with a sharp tooth: a riveting critique of the philosophy of survival of the fittest.”

THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL is a “blistering expose of middle-class life, laced with acid humor.” The prodigal of the title is Eustace Jackson, the son of a wealthy manufacturer. Five years earlier Eustace was packed off to Australia to make his fortune, but he only succeeds at failing in everything he attempts. Desperate and destitute, he returns home uninvited to the bosom of his family who had so fondly hoped they were rid of him for good. The resulting collision is “both hilarious and uncomfortable,” culminating in “a final act of anguish and confrontation which is genuinely gripping.”

“Written in varying shades of grey, the piece combines devastating criticism of the rich (whether idle or industrious) with a bleakly determinist view of human character. More to the point, it uses social argument as

THE IMP ANYA OF BEING V et the

and you’ll g general idea.”

In 2001 the Shaw Festival in Canada produced THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL and it became the surprise hit of the season and was revived the following year. (This summer Shaw Festival will be producing Hankin’s play THE CASSILAS ENGAGEMENT.) The Orange Tree in London also revived PRODIGAL in 1993. Hankin’s writing was celebrated for its “insightful construction, and dazzling delineation of character.”

“What a joy to discover” the critics exclaimed, while extolling Hankin’s comic gifts; the “crisp, at times almost Oscar Wildean dialogue,” and “the twinkle of life in the dialogue.” But Hankin is a complex comedian; his sometimes cynical voice, “seems so modern and insightful.” Hankin’s is “the voice of the ruthless observer and true subversive.” “We leave the theater disquieted by what we’ve seen. And isn’t that what good theater is all about?”

St. John Hankin was a writer truly ahead of his time. When The Dramatic Works of St. John Hankin was published in 1912, The New York Times wrote that, “His influence is not to be measured by the fact that the London stage has apparently found no use for him.…To have let a little light and air into the English theater at a time when the windows had for years been shut, and the blinds drawn was no mean accomplishment.”

St. John Hankin (1869-1909) St. John Hankin began to contribute humorous essays and dramatic parodies including new “last-acts” for well-known plays to Punch magazine 1898. In 1901 some of his contributions were anthologized as Mr. Punch’s Dramatic Sequels. Hankin also contributed about seventy drama reviews to The London Times before beginning his career as a playwright in 1903 with THE TWO MR. WETHERBY’S. Hankin was actively involved in running the Stage Society, a London theater group that supported plays of literary merit, founded in part, to avoid the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship.

Hankin was the only living dramatist other than Shaw to have more than one full-length play produced at the Royal Court during the important Vedrenne-Barker years from 1904 to 1907. Granville Barker produced the premieres of both THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL and THE CHARITY THAT BEGAN AT HOME. During Hankin’s youth his father suffered a nervous breakdown, which left him an invalid. Hankin himself began to suffer from increasing ill health in 1907 and he was plagued with the fear that he would suffer the same fate as his father. On a “dull, sultry, wet” day in June of 1909, St. John Hankin tied two seven-pound dumbbells around his neck and drowned himself in the river Ithon.

He left his wife a letter expressing his fear that he would “slip into invalidism,” which he could not bear and ended by telling her, “I have found a lovely pool in a river and at the bottom I hope to find rest.” George Bernard Shaw described his death as “a public calamity.”

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March 23rd th LE THE RUTH “THE VOICE OF BVERSIVE… ND TRUE SU mes OBSERVER A OR.” -Sunday Ti H ACID-HUM LACED WIT BY: ST. JOHN

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