FURTHER READINGS A READING SERIES THAT FURTHER EXPLORES THE WORK OF OUR FAVORITE PLAYWRIGHTS.
Waters of the Moon by N.C. Hunter
Featuring an introduction by Charles Duff, author of The Lost Summer: The Heyday of the West End Theatre By N.C. Hunter Directed By Austin Pendleton July 22 through September 24 at The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W 42nd) Reserve your FPC Tickets now! FPC Hotline: (212) 315-0231
SUNDAY, AUGUST 14 before & after the matinee: A DAY WITH CHARLES DUFF Have tickets to another performance? You’re welcome to join us for brunch! (Brunch only for $35) 12:30pm – Brunch and discussion at West Bank Cafe: Join Charles Duff for a delicious pre-matinee brunch at West Bank Cafe, where he will provide an introduction to A Day by the Sea and share his own personal memories of working with N.C Hunter on the author’s The Adventures of Tom Random. 2:30pm – Matinee performance of A Day by the Sea at Theatre Row. 5:00pm – Continue the conversation at the Theatre Row Lounge: Join Charles Duff, Jonathan Bank, and select members of the company for a post-show wine and cheese reception at the Theatre Row Lounge. Brunch, one matinee ticket, and post-show reception: $75 for members of the First-Priority Club. Call 212.315.0231 to reserve your place.
Monday, August 15th at 7pm The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row Spring Raffle FREE for members of our First Priority Club For reservations call 212.315.0231 “It fills the heart with laughter and strengthens the spirit.” Harold Hobson, Sunday Times, 1951 N.C. Hunter’s gently comic Waters of the Moon is a touching and skillful examination of class, culture, and disillusionment in post-WWII England. The play centers on the lonely inhabitants of a secluded hotel who live out their days in genteel poverty. When a winter storm brings the arrival of the glamorous and outspoken Helen Lancaster, whose car and family have become snowbound on the way to a New Year’s Eve party, the hotel’s residents are forced to confront their resigned and isolated lives. Waters of the Moon was Hunter’s biggest hit, establishing his reputation as one of England’s leading commercial playwrights of the 1950s. The play opened at the Haymarket Theatre on the West End as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain, in a lavish production that starred Wendy Hiller, Dame Sybil Thorndike, and Dame Edith Evans. The production continued to run for a smashing 835 performances, causing New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson “to look with envy on a theatre center like London that can keep such a mild, though intelligent, play with such an extravagant cast continuously on the boards for two years.” In 1977, the play was successfully revived for the Chichester Festival Theatre with Ingrid Bergman in the role of Helen Lancaster. In a review for the Times titled “An Unjust Neglect,” Irving Wardle applauded the play for its “fine workmanship, hard comic edge, and capacity for doing humane justice to ten characters within the confines of a well-articulated plot.” Mint Theater Company is pleased to present Waters of the Moon in a one-night Further Reading on August 15th. The evening will feature an introduction by guest speaker Charles Duff, who began his career in 1967 as an actor in N.C. Hunter’s The Adventures of Tom Random, and later went on to write about the original production of Waters of the Moon in his book, The Lost Summer: The Heyday of the West End Theatre.