First Priority C lub News Volume VIII, Issue II
Mint Theater Company
October, 2010
What The Public Wants
Play by
Arnold Bennett to commence performances January 13th at The Mint Theater
“ Brilliantly Illuminating ”
The Times (London)
precisely ironic manner ”
Volume VIII, Issue II October, 2010 John Drinkwater, The Manchester Guardian, 1923
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS is Arnold Bennett’s sly satire on tabloid journalism—a lively look at life behind the headlines and proof that the more things change, the more they stay the same. This clever 1909 comedy charts the efforts of media mogul Sir Charles Worgan to boost circulation as well as his social standing. He owns forty different publications and claims to have “revolutionized journalism.” He employs over a thousand people and is worth millions—and yet Worgan wants more—he wants respect. Respect from the “superior people” who look down their noses at him. But is he willing to pay the price?
The Daily Mail—Bennett was afraid his play might never be produced. Censorship laws were notoriously strict; plays that were deemed libelous or scandalous would not be licensed for public performances. To avoid this risk, independent theater clubs gave “private” one-off performances open only to people who’d paid membership fees.
“One of the best comedies of our time,” wrote Max Beerbohm of the play’s London premiere. “No one but Bernard Shaw sends up ideas as skyrockets more successfully than Mr. Bennett,” wrote the Chicago Evening Post of the play’s American debut in 1913.
The Stage Society was one such group and they premiered WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS in March 1909. The scandal Bennett feared never erupted. The public simply wanted more. “A brilliantly illuminating satire,” declared the London Times, and the play promptly transferred to the West End where it was hailed as “a very amusing and often very witty farce.”
Loosely inspired by the rise of Lord Northcliffe, founder of Britain’s leading tabloid,
“ A masterpiece in Bennett’s own
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS proved so popular it was published in three different editions between 1909 and 1911, including as a serial in McClure’s Magazine. McClure’s then printed the entire play plus a “Prologue” by Curtis P. Brady, Secretary of the magazine. In it, he poses a question that we are still asking 100 years later: “How good can a magazine
Sir Charles: All I want is for the public to have what it wants. I’m told I pander to the passions of the public. Call it that if you like. It’s what e ver ybody is tr ying to do. Only I succeed. Mind you, I don’ t call it that. I call it supplying a le gitimate demand. or newspaper be and still make money? How bad can it be and yet not be too bad for the public?” WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS was first seen in the U.S. in 1913, when the Manchester Repertory Company toured Boston and Chicago. The Boston Globe described the play as a “delightfully clever satire, often of scintillating brilliancy,thoroughly interesting and constantly
entertaining,” while the Chicago Tribune praised Bennett’s play as “luminous and watchful, a gem.” In 1922, the Theatre Guild produced the New York premiere. It was directed by Louis Calvert, who had acted in the West End production. The Telegraph praised its “brilliant intellectual qualities” while the Post called it “an entertaining satiric comedy.” Bennett’s prescient comedy has been revived numerous times in England; each time critics have commented on how the play never shows its age. “The thing that impresses one most about WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS is its curious upto-dateness… Indeed, its purpose is all the more urgent now,” writes The Stage. “The satire is as topical, the wit as keen, and the humor as penetrating.” 100 years after it was written, Bennett’s savage wit still hits the target. Join us in for the first New York production of Bennett’s acerbic masterpiece since 1922. It just might be what the public wants.
When Arnold Bennett died in 1931, it was front page news in The New York Times. Only 64, he was still “in the full tide of his prodigious literary output, which had brought him more readers and more riches than any other British author.” “More riches” turned out to be literally tr ue: The Times later reported that Bennett “disposed of what is expected to rank as the largest literary fortune in history” ($500,000). Today, even the work that readers and critics were certain would endure has been forgotten. Have you ever heard of him? Have you read “The Old Wives Tale” ranked as one of the 100-best novels of the last century?
ABOUT THE
PLAYWRIGHT
In 1929, the Manchester Guardian asked readers to vote for “the novelists who may be read in 2029.” The top five? John Galsworthy, H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Rudyard Kipling, and J.M. Barrie. Third on the list, Arnold Bennett (18671931) is perhaps the least known today. A novelist, journalist, short story writer and essayist, he was also a playwright. From 1908 to 1927, his plays regularly appeared in the West End and Broadway. In 1913, at the peak of his playwriting fame, 2,700 performances of his plays were given across the world. Even in a “bad year,” Bennett could count on 400 performances somewhere. Bennett’s origins were far from the footlights. He was born on May 27, 1867 in Hanley, one of the six towns of the Potteries, the center of the English ceramics industry. The bleak northern landscape shaped Bennett’s imagination. Much of his work would center on the region — which Bennett renamed The Five Towns “for purposes of euphony” according to biographer Anita Miller. Bennett’s family barely made ends meet
by heather j. violanti
as his father, Enoch, went from job to job. Enoch desperately yearned for wealth and status and finally achieved them when he became a solicitor at age 34. By the time Bennett was in his teens, his family lived comfortably, but he never forgot their early struggle. Poverty—and the burning desire to overcome it—would feature prominently in his writing. Enoch wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, but the law bored Bennett. He failed his law exams—twice. In 1889, Bennett moved to London. His northern accent—and pronounced stammer— made it difficult for him to be accepted. Actor Allan Wade recalled: “One’s first impression was A.B. was a little disconcerting. Wearing a high collar and a bowler hat slightly askew, his hands in his pockets, he carried his head cocked with what seemed an aggressive air. But soon one discerned much kindness in the eyes and behind the stammer a certain shyness which the aggressive manner was no doubt intended to conceal.“
Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT By day, Bennett clerked in a law office. By night, he studied French and Russian novelists and wrote short stories. In 1893, he won 20 guineas in a writing contest sponsored by Tit Bits magazine; by 1894 he was assistant editor for The Woman. Bennett resented working for a “lady’s paper,” but the post gave him entry into London’s literary world. He was soon writing for several publications. In 1898 he published his first novel, A Man from the North, a fictionalized version of his own effort to find fame in London. It was written over a series of Sundays, Bennett’s only day off from the magazine. A Man from The North established Bennett’s reputation as a novelist. For his vivid, honest portrayal of modern life, The Manchester Guardian deemed him “an uncompromising realist…a master of all the little sordid details.” Eden Phillpotts, a friend of Bennett’s, praised his “freshness of thought and great distinction of style” in the magazine Black and White. Bolstered by such promising reviews, Bennett quit The Woman in 1900 and focused on writing full-time. Bennett helped revolutionize the English novel with his complex characters, compassion, and use of multiple, startling perspectives. Bennett’s novels showed everything from how a baby views the world to an old man struggling with dementia, groundbreaking subjects for the time.
poses as a valet, was based on his 1908 novel Buried Alive. It ran for 673 performances in London and was frequently revived. Milestones (1911), written in collaboration with American playwright Edward Knoblock, was inspired by The Old Wives’ Tale, Bennett’s novel about three generations of a powerful family. Each act of Milestones takes place in a different decade, a radical device for the time. Bennett’s playwriting career slowed during the First World War, when he focused his energies elsewhere. He wrote numerous articles in support of England’s entry into the war— leading to an intense debate with George Bernard Shaw—and he toured the Western Front, filing stories from the battlefield. In 1918, he was appointed Director of Propaganda in France for the Ministry of Information. After the war, Bennett ventured into producing and theatre management. With Nigel Playfair, he helped revitalize the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, making it a showplace for witty comedies and sparkling revivals. Bennett crafted the libretto for the Lyric’s 1920 production of The Beggar’s Opera, which ran for three years and 1463 performances. He also wrote screenplays, including an unproduced project for Alfred Hitchcock called Punch and Judy, and Piccadilly (1929), a lurid tale of London nightclubs starring Anna May Wong.
In the late 1890’s, on the advice of friends, Bennett decided to try playwriting. He began with “curtain raisers,” short one-acts that preceded full-length plays, but it was not until he established himself as a novelist that Bennett’s playwriting career blossomed. His first full-length play, Cupid and Commonsense, an adaptation of his 1902 novel Anna of the Five Towns, was produced by The Stage Society in 1908. Reviews were strong, and in 1909, they produced Bennett’s second play, What the Public Wants, based on his own journalistic experience. Reviews were even stronger, and the play transferred to a longer run on the West End. Bennett often used his fiction as a source for his drama. The Great Adventure (1911), about a wealthy painter who
A drawing of the famously prolific Bennett at work.
As a playwright, Bennett never recaptured his pre-war success. He came close with one of his last produced plays, Mr. Prohack (1927)—a whimsical comedy about a miserly civil servant who unexpectedly inherits a fortune. The play provided young Charles Laughton with one of his first leading roles. It was on its way to being a hit when a booking conflict at the theatre prevented an extension. The discouraged Bennett wrote his journal “Career as a dramatist closing.” Still, Bennett was one of the most influential—and wealthiest—writers in Europe. His weekly book reviews in The Evening Standard could make or break an author’s career; his novels were best-sellers.
A caricature of the older Bennett.
His penchant for detail and realism were attacked by the rising Modernists—most famously Virginia Woolf in her essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”—but in his lifetime, at least, Bennett remained a formidable force. Throughout his life, Bennett loved to travel and he kept a second home in France. It was in France, while visiting friends Andre Gide and James Joyce, that he contracted typhoid in 1930. His wife, Dorothy Cheston, promptly took him home to London, but Bennett could not overcome the infection. As he lay dying, the streets outside his window were lined with straw to mute the sound of traffic, an old London custom usually reserved for royalty. Bennett died on March 27, 1931. Tributes came pouring in from all over the world. The prominent New York critic George Jean Nathan observed: “The news of his death depresses me, for when such an artist dies the world is just a little more desolate than it was before.”
What was
THE STAGE SOCIETY?
F
ounded in 1899, the Stage Society provided an alternative to commercial theater and enabled producers to avoid the strict censorship of the Lord Chamberlain. The Society ’s mission was threefold— to champion new British playwrights, to introduce the work of important European dramatists, and to foster upcoming actors and directors. Without the Stage Society, “the development of modern drama in England would have been a vastly different story,” according to scholar James Woodfield in his book, English Theatre in Transition, 1881-1914. S ince it presented private performances open only to members—people who paid a subscription fee, as opposed to the general public—the Society did not have to fear plays being censored by the Lord Chamberlain. Production costs were kept low. Typically, a Society production would only run for one or two matinees at a rented West End theatre. Given this structure, the Society could present plays that were unconventional in form, such as the works of Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck, or that tackled risqué issues, including Shaw ’s polemic on prostitution, Mrs. Warren’s Profession.
Able to take risks, the Stage Society proved invaluable in launching numerous artists who would shape modern drama. Shaw was viewed primarily as a critic until the Society produced his earliest plays, including You Never Can Tell (1899), Candida (1900), and Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1902). Harley Granville Barker (whose plays The Voysey Inheritance and The Madras House have been seen at the Mint), cut his teeth as both a director and playwright for the Society. He made his directorial debut at the Society in 1900 with Maeterlinck ’s Interior and Death of Tintagiles, and they produced his first play,
by heather j. violanti The Marrying of Ann Leete, in 1902. (A staged reading of Ann Leete was given at the Mint in 2009). Another influential playwright familiar to Mint audiences—St. John Hankin (whose The Charity That Began at Home was seen here in 2002, followed by The Return of the Prodigal in 2007)—made his playwriting debut with the Stage Society with The Two Mr. Wetherbys in 1903, followed by The Cassilis Engagement in 1907 and The Last of The DeMullins in 1908. So Arnold Bennett was in good company when the Society produced his first full-length play, Cupid and Commonsense, in 1908. A successful journalist and novelist who’d yet to make a name for himself as a playwright, Bennett was exactly the kind of author the Society cultivated—someone with theatrical potential who’d proven himself in another discipline. The enthusiastic response for Bennett ’s second Stage Society production, What the Public Wants (1909), led to an immediate West End transfer. One of Bennett ’s greatest stage successes—The Great Adventure (1911), which ran for 673 performances—was directed by Society alumnus Granville Barker, who’d established himself as an influential director and playwright. Granville Barker, for one, never forgot the influence of the Stage Society upon his career. At a dinner celebrating his accomplishments as co-manager of the Royal Court Theatre from 1904 to 1907, he remarked:
W
e must never forget that we are standing on the shoulders of other men. Our work is but a continuation…by that body to which I am always included to refer to as my father and mother called the Stage Society.
A sneak preview: Dialogue sample from Francis: But after all, supposing what he says isn’t true? Sir Charles: Isn’t true! was! Look at the thing!
Nobody ever said it
Francis: [Reads.] “England and her enemy. Grave situation. Is the Government asleep?” All across two columns. Sir Charles: Yes, yes. But what does he say at the end? “The above facts, which I have no wish to unduly emphasise, and which I give with due reserve, are the staple of current conversation in certain circles here, and I should be failing in my duty if I did not bring them to the attention of the British public.” Francis:
Why didn’t he begin by saying that?
Sir Charles:
Oh, rot!
You don’t know what
September 28, 1997
Who’s Afraid of Arnold Bennett? BOOKEND / By WENDY LESSER I have an experiment for you to try. The next time you’re at a literary gathering, ask 10 people whether they’ve ever read Arnold Bennett. Now, by “literary gathering” I do not mean your run-of-the-mill publisher’s cocktail party, your average book award ceremony. For the experiment to work, you have to choose a group consisting of people who actually read -- anti-Derridean English professors, say, or poets over the age of 40, or freelance writers who pack Trollope novels in their vacation luggage. Even in such a narrowly selected group, I predict, no more than one in ten will have read an Arnold Bennett novel. One or two will honestly confess they’ve never heard of him; another two or three will say his name sounds vaguely familiar. But fully half your sample is likely to pipe up with the information that though they haven’t read Bennett himself, they have read Virginia Woolf ’s 1924 essay “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.” And that essay, they will suggest, made it abundantly clear that there was no need ever to read Arnold Bennett.
I find it disturbing that Virginia Woolf, the possessor of an intense but extremely lim- e n r i c h M INT s p e c i a l e v e n t ited form of genius, should have been able, in the course of just 60 or 70 years, to crowd a great novelist like Arnold Bennett right off Sunday, January 23rd the literary map. It is as if you had planted a after the matinee delightfully unusual ground cover in your garden, only to discover some years later that its wendy lesser is the editor of The rampant spread had killed your favorite oak. Threepenny Review, and author of (Well, not oak, exactly. Charles Dickens is an the book Music for Silenced Voices: oak. Bennett is more like an unruly old apple Shostakovich and His Fifteen Quartets, tree: he could use some pruning, but the fruit to be published by Yale University Press is delicious.) … in March 2011. Wendy has written seven previous nonfiction books, most Like many great novelists, Bennett wrote a number of mediocre books, and if you start recently Room for Doubt (2007), and with the wrong one (“Hilda Lessways,” say, or one novel. Winner of awards and “The Pretty Lady,” or “The Grand Babylon fellowships from the Guggenheim Hotel” or even “Buried Alive,” though these Foundation, the American Academy each have their minor virtues), you might of Arts & Letters, and numerous well wonder what all my fuss is about. But other organizations, she has written Arnold Bennett did write one indisputable book, theater, film, dance, and music masterpiece, “The Old Wives’ Tale,” and that criticism for a variety of print and is where I recommend you start. I have read online publications. She divides her it twice already, at 15 and at 40, and I hope year between Berkeley and New York. to get another chance at 65. Each time I’m in the midst of reading it, I think it the best novel ever written.… The above is excerpted from a longer article which can be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/ bookend/bookend.html
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS journalism is. He said it, and that’s enough. We’ve got to give all the news there is going about, and we’ve got to sell the paper. And by God we do sell it! We spend money like water, and we have the largest circulation in the country. We please the largest public. We pay the highest prices. We make the largest profits. You may or may not like the paper, but it’s a national institution, let me tell you. A national institution!
These illustrations are by James Montgomery Flagg (famous for the “I Want You” recruiting poster for the U.S. Army), from the play ’s serial printing in McClure’s Magazine.
wendy lesser at the met
Wendy will be hosting preconcert conversations before each of the performances in the Pacifica Quartet’s Shostakovich string quartet cycle, part of the Metropolitan Museum Concerts’ 2010-2011 season.
For more information, visit:
www.metmuseum.org
e n r i c h MINT
events
Our line-up of post-show EnrichMint events is still in formation. Please check our website for updates, we will be adding details and additional speakers over the next two months. 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 January 15th J. Ellen Gainor, Cornell University
Saturday January 22nd Martin Meisel, Columbia University
J. Ellen Gainor is Professor of Theatre and Associate Dean of the Graduate School. A specialist in British and American drama of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and women’s dramaturgy, she is the author of the award-winning studies Shaw’s Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Constructions of Gender and Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture and Politics 1915-48. Most recently, she co-authored The Norton Anthology of Drama. She has also edited two influential essay collections, Imperialism and Theatre and Performing America: Culture Nationalism in American Theater. She is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Mint Theater and works regularly for the Shaw Festival in Canada. She is currently completing another editing project, The Complete Plays of Susan Glaspell.
Martin Meisel is the Brander Matthews Professor Emeritus of Dramatic Literature (the oldest such chair in America).
Sunday January 16th Andie Tucher, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Andie Tucher, a historian and journalist, directs the Communications PhD program. Her book Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America’s First Mass Medium (UNC 1994) won the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians. Before coming to Columbia, Tucher served as a speechwriter for Clinton/Gore ’92. She was an editorial associate to Bill Moyers at Public Affairs Television, and edited his book World of Ideas II (1990). She also served as an editorial producer of the historical documentary series The Twentieth Century at ABC News and an associate editor of Columbia Journalism Review.
He is the author of Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theater (Princeton and Oxford), Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England (Princeton), as well as numerous essays and articles on drama and the visual arts. He has been the recipient of two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, residential fellowships at the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (Edinburgh); and of awards from the American Philosophical Society and the Huntington Library among others. In 2003 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia. Sunday, January 23rd Wendy Lesser, Editor, The Three Penny Review Sunday, January 30th Steve Lipman, The Jewish Week A native of Buffalo, Lipman has worked as editor of the Buffalo Jewish Review (1975-83) and as staff writer at The Jewish Week (1983-now). He’s done freelancing for several newspaper and magazines, and wrote two books: Laughter in Hell, a study of the role humor played as a form of spiritual resistance during the Third Reich, and a study on the weekly Torah portion.
Further Readings The Deevy Project Continues On Monday December 6th at 7:30 we’ll be offering our next installment of the Deevy Project, a reading of Deevy’s surprising and delightful one-act romance: Strange Birth. To the best of our knowledge, this play has never been produced. It was published twice, in 1946 and again in 1947, along with two other Deevy one-acts. In an Irish Times review of the published text, critic R.M. Fox writes: Reading these plays, I asked myself why the work of a modern Irish dramatist of such creative power is not seen more often on the Irish stage…here is a major dram atist whose work should not only be heard on the radio, but seen on the stage. For those who want to know the work of a leading Irish dramatist, these three one-acts are valuable. Ibsen’s women characters wanted to break chains, but Teresa Deevy’s women demand high adventure and emancipation of the spirit….Why is that the work of this fine dramatist is not seen more often on the stage? It is a mystery to me. In addition to Strange Birth, we’ll be offering reprise of our reading of the “alternative ending” of Wife to James Whelan (from the radio version of the play) featuring Shawn Fagan and Janie Brookshire. Please join us! Further readings are FREE to members of the First Priority Club, and $15 for the public.
Coming Up A Little Journey by Rachel Crothers directed by Jackson Gay begins May 5, 2011
Temporal Powers by Teresa Deevy directed by Jonathan Bank begins July 2011
More information coming soon!
Cheap tix You don’t have to be a cheapskate to appreciate a bargain, especially these days. Mint Theater Company is now offering a limited number of seats for every performance at half-price ($27.50). If you like to know where you’ll be sitting, this isn’t for you: “You pays your money and you takes your chances.” Cheap Tix may be ordered in advance, but once they’re gone, they’re gone.
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS
by Arnold Bennett, directed by Matthew Arbour
$27.50 Cheap Tix (see info above) $40 tickets January 13- 30 (with code JAN40) $55 for performances February 1 - March 13. box office:
12-6pm Monday thru Friday by mail or in person: 311 W. 43rd St, Ste 307 New York, NY 10036
Performances begin January 13, 2011
Tues., Wed., Thurs. 7pm Friday & Saturday 8pm Saturday & Sunday 2pm
by phone:
(212) 315-0231 by fax: (212) 977-5211 online: www.minttheater.org (from Nov. 29) no service charges for first-priority club members!
What the Public Wants Seat selection (for $40/$55 tickets only) I prefer to sit: Right up front A few rows back On the aisle I require wheelchair accessibility
DATE
TIME (2PM/7PM/8PM)
# OF TICKETS
PRICE ($27.50/40/$55)
X
SUBTOTAL
=
Further Reading - The Teresa Deevy Project DATE
Dec. 6, 2010
TIME
# OF TICKETS
7:30pm
PRICE
X
SUBTOTAL
FREE
0
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FIRST PRIORITY CLUB Dear Friends, My heartfelt thanks to all of you who helped to make our production of Wife to James Whelan one of our most successful ever. Your enthusiasm for the work of this remarkable Irish woman matched my own— making this a most gratifying experience. Our Teresa Deevy project is off to a great start! The “project” will continue with a reading of Deevy’s delicate oneact play, Strange Birth. Our “Further Readings” are free to members of the First-Priority Club; please take advantage and make plans to join us on December 6th! This newsletter brings you information about our next production: What the Public Wants by British novelist and playwright, Arnold Bennett. Very few people even recognize Bennett’s name anymore, but there was a time when he was one of the world’s most highly regarded (and highest earning) authors. With What the Public Wants, the Mint returns to the Edwardian era—prime time for some of my favorite playwrights:
Granville Barker, Githa Sowerby, Cecily Hamilton and St. John Hankin, plus some others that I haven’t got to yet. These are all writers influenced in some degree by Shaw and their plays are a delicious brew of wit and ideas. Bennett fits right in. I’m looking forward to sharing this one with you; it’s a play I’ve wanted to do for about four years—and finally the time is just right! In the office, we’re working on a number of ways to improve service to our patrons. Soon you’ll be able to choose your seats when you order your tickets online. Speaking of seats, we have a very nice surprise in store for you in 2011. More on that later. We’re also announcing a new low-priced ticket initiative; details inside, on the order blank page. All the best,
Jonathan
first priority club news www.minttheater.org (212) 315-0231 311 West 43rd Street, Suite # 307 New York, NY 10036