Next at the Mint... Philip Goes Forth by George Kelly August 24th - October 14th FPC Hotline: (212) 315-0231 Fax: (212) 977-5211 Address: 311 W. 43rd St. Suite 307 New York, NY 10036 Box Office: Mon.- Sat Noon-6pm Sun.- Noon-3pm Performances: Tues., Wed., Thurs. 7pm Friday & Saturday 8pm Saturday & Sunday 2pm *Wed Matinee: 9/4, 10/2 *No Performances: 9/3, 9/17, 10/1 evening 8/24
Full Price: $55 FPC Price: $38.50 (Use Code: FPC) CheapTix: $27.50 (when available)
NEXT AT THE MINT
Philip Goes Forth George Kelly DIRECTED BY Jerry Ruiz BY
August 24th - October 14th “I’d go to the only place that a person can go to do this kind of thing,—and that’s New York. There’s more drama around there in ten minutes than there is in a city like this in ten years.” Pilip Goes Forth tells the story of a young man who rebels against his father and a career in the family business and ventures to New York to write plays. He leaves home without his father’s support or blessing, but with this warning: “Don’t imagine, whenever you get red floa ng around up there in the clouds that you can drop right back into your place down here;—that isn’t the way things go—” George Kelly’s comedy made its debut at the Biltmore Theater on Broadway in January of 1931—just four months before the comple on of the Empire State Building, bea ng the Chrysler Building for the tle of “world’s tallest building”. That same year the George Washington Bridge would open, welcoming young people from all over the country, each seduced by the promise of fame and fortune. New York was the city of dreams—and Kelly’s humorous examina on of one young dreamer remains an exquisite portrait of coming-of-age in modern America. “Nothing Mr. Kelly has wri en is lacking in dis nc on and Philip Goes Forth is no excep on,” wrote Robert Garland in the New York World-Telegram calling the play a “gripping character study—human, unhurried and gently edged with sa re.” Arthur Ruhl of the Herald-Tribune echoed the praise, calling the play, a “de piece of work… an evening full of deligh ul humor and light sa re.” Commending Kelly’s rhythmic, wi y dialogue, the New York American wrote, “he laps thick, rich conversa onal cream.” Philip Goes Forth is “George Kelly at his best,” writes Outlook, “which ought to be good enough for anybody.” Not everybody agreed. Kelly has some discouraging words for Philip, his aspiring young author—and this rubbed a few cri cs the wrong way. The Times’ Brooks Atkinson
was especially disgruntled. “To discourage the neophytes about coming to New York and trying their fortune with the arts is to accept considerable responsibility,” Atkinson proclaimed, while missing the point of the play. Kelly responded in the Times a few days later: “The playwright is o en bewildered when he reads the distorted accounts of his play the next morning in the papers.” Kelly was so disappointed by the lack of cri cal percep on that he gave up wri ng for the theater for the next five years. Talk about discouraging! Last March, Mayor Bloomberg announced 2012 as a landmark year for popula on influx in New York City. “Of those who have come, most have been from 25 to 34 years old,” reports The New York Times. There are s ll “thousands of Philips” going forth every day. Mint Theater is thrilled to allow George Kelly’s original Philip to crusade once more— presen ng the play’s first New York revival in 82 years. Jennifer Harmon, pictured here in our 2010 produc on of Dr. Knock by Jules Romains will return to The Mint as Mrs. Ferris in Philip Goes Forth.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT George Kelly “It is difficult to describe a George Kelly play...,” wrote Mary McCarthy in 1947, “simply because it is not like anything else while on the surface it resembles every play one has ever been to.”
Among the most dis nc ve of interwar American drama sts wri ng for the commercial Broadway stage, Pulitzer Prizewinner George Kelly wrote ten full-length plays during a dis nguished career in the New York theatre. Drawing comparisons to both Chekhov and Molière, the acerbic yet humane “Kelly Touch” blended the subtle details and rhythms of middle-class domes c life with the sharp contours of sa re. Kelly cra ed indelible American types in his classic “plays of character” the Torch Bearers, The Show-off, and Craig’s Wife, as well as underappreciated works like Philip Goes Forth. George Edward Kelly was born on January 16th, 1887 in Schuylkill Falls, Pennsylvania, the eighth of ten children born to the remarkable Irish-Catholic family known as the “Philadelphia Kellys.” George’s siblings included Olympic sculling champion and construc on mogul John Kelly (also the father of Grace Kelly), and Walter C. Kelly, a vaudevillian famous for his dialect comedy as “The Virginia Judge.” A er early training as a dra sman, the shy but stage-struck George followed Walter into the theatre, where, beginning in 1911, he acted in touring companies and vaudeville sketches. A er serving in France during World War I, Kelly began to write his own one-act plays for the Keith-Orpheum circuit, where he found success with his comedies Finders Keepers (1916) and The Fla ering Word (1918; Mint Theater Company, 2000), the first of numerous plays with theatrical subjects. The early 1920s li ed Kelly to the height of popular and cri cal acclaim, with plays that he both wrote and directed. While
1922’s The Torch Bearers convulsed audiences with its “travesty on the amateur actor,” 1924’s The Show-Off was hailed as a masterwork by many cri cs, including Heywood Broun, who called it “the best comedy which has yet been wri en by an American.” Although Kelly decried the Twen es as “The Vulgar Age,” the era’s go-ge ng business spirit sa rically fueled The Show-Off, whose tle character Aubrey Piper became a synonym for a blustering braggart. Kelly created another American archetype in the obsessive, destruc ve housewife of his next play, the 1925 psychological drama Craig’s Wife, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize. By this me, notes Foster Hirsch, “a new play (by Kelly) was as keenly an cipated as a new one by Eugene O’Neill.” A er Craig’s Wife, Kelly’s plays declined in favor, as he “strayed away from the sa re upon which his career is founded,” according to cri c John Mason Brown. While cri cs con nued to admire his “keen insight” and consummate cra smanship, such dramas as 1927’s Behold the Bridegroom gave Kelly the image of an austere moralist out of step with the uninhibited Twen es (though Joseph Wood Krutch observed in 1929, “A George Kelly play that is a failure is o en more memorable than the successes of other playwrights”). He returned to a theatrical, and more comic, milieu with 1931’s Philip Goes Forth, the chilly cri cal recep on of which deeply disappointed Kelly and prompted a move to Hollywood, where he worked for five years as a screenwriter and script consultant. Kelly revisited signature themes in his last Broadway plays. Like both The Torch Bearers and Philip Goes Forth, Reflected Glory (1936), starring Tallulah Bankhead, treated the theatre “as a disciplined cra and as an art but also something of a divine calling,” as Hirsch describes. The Deep Mrs. Sykes (1945) and The Fatal Weakness (1946), recalled Craig’s Wife (his final produc on, in a 1947 revival) in their character studies of feminine folly. Kelly con nued to write, comple ng several unproduced plays, even as his niece became one of the most famous women in the world, as the movie star Princess of Monaco. Famously re cent about his own private life, Kelly was noted as a “bachelor,” though he was involved, for over fi y years, with his valet and companion, William E. Weagly. Out of fashion and semi-forgo en, George Kelly moved in 1957 – with Weagly – to a re rement village in Sun City, California, and died at the age of 87 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania on June 18, 1974. Today, Kelly’s obscurity is beginning to li . The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout recently observed (in reviewing the Westport Country Playhouse’s June 2013 revival of The Show-Off), “If any of Mr. Kelly’s other plays....are as good as this, then he’s definitely ripe for revalua on.” Indeed, the twentyfirst century seems poised, once again, to bear the torch for this theatrical master and singular “Philadelphia Kelly.” - Maya Cantu
A PICTURE OF AUTUMN EXTENDED UNTIL JULY 27 “N. C. Hunter’s beau ful, shamefully neglected comedy was performed only once in London in 1951, and receives its American première here. It’s about an aging, once prosperous family living in an aging, once grand manor, and the echoes of Chekhov are unmistakable, if subdued and Anglicized. It’s a big, generous play, exquisitely wri en, both funny and touching.” The New Yorker
A PICTURE OF AUTUMN by N.C. Hunter May 23rd- July 27th
Now Running Until July 27 “A Picture of Autumn is impressive in every way, and the Mint’s staging, directed with quiet intelligence by Gus Kaikkonen and acted by a topdrawer ensemble cast, is so strong that in a perfect world it would trigger a general revival of interest in Mr. Hunter’s work.” Wall Street Journal AŌer PHILIP GOES FORTH, join us for LONDON WALL, beginning Feb 1st. London Wall by John Van Druten explores the tumultuous lives and love affairs of the women employed as typists in a busy solicitor’s office in 1930’s London. The play made its premiere in May of 1931 at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London and was acclaimed for its hyper-realis c depic on of office life as well as its soulful probing of the dreams and desires of its female characters. “Here is life as it is lived under the pressure of ins tu ons,” wrote Ivor Brown in The Observer. “Here are people struggling with things, amusing each other, enraging each other, and enchan ng each other.” London Wall recently received an acclaimed produc on at London’s Finborough Theater, where many responded to how well the play had held up a er 82 years. “It hasn’t been revived un l now, yet comes up fresh as paint,” hailed Charles Spencer of The Telegraph, calling London Wall “a fascina ng and some mes deeply touching play.” Henry Hitchings of the London Evening Standard con nued the praise saying, “The greatest pleasures lie in Van Druten’s percep ve wri ng, which feels wonderfully fresh…the play itself is a sa sfying rediscovery, eloquent about the rela onship between work, class and romance.” Our produc on will be directed by Davis McCallum who recently helmed the 2012 Pulitzer-Prize winning play, Water by the Spoonful at Second Stage as well as the Lucille Lortel Award-winning produc on of The Whale at Playwrights Horizons. Mint Theater is pleased to present the American premiere of John Van Druten’s “rive ngly entertaining” (The Guardian) roman c drama, London Wall from February 1st.
FPC Hotline: (212) 315-0231 Fax: (212) 977-5211 Address: 311 W. 43rd St. Suite 307 New York, NY 10036 Box Office: Mon.- Sat Noon-6pm Sun.- Noon-3pm Performances: Tues., Wed., Thurs. 7pm Friday & Saturday 8pm Saturday & Sunday 2pm *Wed Matinee: 7/3, 7/24 *No Performances: 7/2, 7/15, 7/22 Full Price: $55 FPC Price: $38.50 (Use Code: FPC) See it again for only $20 (Use code COMEAGAIN) CheapTix: $27.50 (when available) www.mintheater.org photos by Richard Termine
FIRST PRIORITY CLUB
Next at the Mint... PHILLIP GOES FORTH by George Kelly May 23rd- July 14th
Dear Friends,
FPC Hotline: (212) 315-0231
Summer is usually a very busy me at the Mint and that is certainly the case in 2013. A Picture Of Autumn has extended through the end of July and we’ll begin rehearsals for our next play, Philip Goes Forth just days later. This edi on of your First-Priority Newsle er has informa on about this though ul comedy by George Kelly, the author of The Show-Off, which you may have seen at the Westport Country Playhouse this summer. I was the assistant director on a produc on of The Show-Off at the Roundabout back in 1992, which starred Boyd Gaines in the tle role. You can read more about Kelly’s career inside.
Fax: (212) 977-5211
Philip Goes Forth is one of three plays I have planned for next year, all first produced in 1931; London Wall by John Van Druten is the second, the third is Donogoo by Jules Romains, the author of Dr. Knock. That will come next May in a new transla on by Gus Kaikkonen, who also translated Knock. That gives us an American play, and English play and a play from France, all from 1931. Best wishes to you all for a relaxing and rewarding summer. I hope to see you soon!
Address: 311 W. 43rd St. Suite 307 New York, NY 10036 Box Office: Mon.- Sat Noon-6pm Sun.- Noon-3pm Performances: Tues., Wed., Thurs. 7pm Friday & Saturday 8pm Saturday & Sunday 2pm Full Price: $55 FPC Price: $38.50 (Use Code: FPC) CheapTix: $27.50 (when available) www.mintheater.org
first priority club news www.minttheater.org (212) 315-0231 311 West 43rd Street, Suite # 307 New York, NY 10036
Jonathan