Austin Pendleton to Direct Mint Theater's A DAY BY THE SEA at Theatre Row

Coming up next for Mint Theater Company (Jonathan Bank, Producing Artistic Director; Jen Soloway, Managing Director) will be the first ever New York revival of A Day by the Sea by N.C. Hunter, directed by Austin Pendleton. This will be the Mint's first production as a resident theater company at Theatre Row. Performances will begin July 22nd and continue through September 24th at their new home at the Beckett Theater at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street between 9th and Dyer Avenues). Opening Night is set for August 25th.

Austin Pendleton returns to the Mint to direct a cast that features Julian Elfer, Katie Firth, Philip Goodwin, Sean Gormley, Polly McKie, Kylie McVey, George Morfogen, Mark Anderson Phillips, Athan Sporek, and Jill Tanner. A Day by the Sea will have scenic design by Charles Morgan; costume design by Martha Hally; lighting design by Xavier Pierce; and sound design by Jane Shaw.

Mint Theater is proud to welcome back Pendleton who has had a long association with the Mint, dating back to before the company turned its attention to reviving lost and neglected plays. In 1995 Mint produced the World Premiere of Pendleton's play, Uncle Bob, featuring George Morfogen in the title role, which was written for him. Austin and George first worked together in 1960 and have been fast friends ever since. The Mint is thrilled to have them together again for A Day at the Sea.

Austin Pendleton is an acclaimed actor, playwright and director, having won Drama Desk and Obie Awards, as well as a Tony Award nomination for his direction of The Little Foxes starring Elizabeth Taylor and Maureen Stapleton. He is also the subject of a new documentary, which recently had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival: Starring Austin Pendleton, directed by Gene Gallerano & David H. Holmes. "The most famous actor you've never heard of; Austin Pendleton reflects on his life and craft while his A-list peers discuss his vast influence and what it means to be an original in a celebrity-obsessed world." The film includes interviews with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Natalie Portman, Olympia Dukakis, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

A Day by the Sea is a warm, human and often humorous depiction of the "crisis" of middle age. Julian Anson, a once-promising Foreign Service employee, confronts professional disappointment and personal failure while picnicking along the English seaside. Jolted into the realization that maybe it's not too late-he seizes an opportunity to correct his past mistakes and start fresh-but will the results be any different?

A Day by the Sea opened on the West End in 1953 and ran for 386 performances in a production at the Haymarket that featured theatrical royalty: Sir John Gielgud, Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Lewis Casson and Dame Sybil Thorndike. Star casting was both a blessing and a curse for the playwright. Some reviewers couldn't see past the brilliant performances to discern the intrinsic value of Hunter's subtle genius. When a critic for The Stage returned for a second visit a year later, he observed that "a full house responded to [the play's] charm, pathos and gentle humor with an intensity made all the more impressive by obvious sincerity and reasonable enthusiasm...Mr. Hunter's lack of spectacular invention and striking originality is made up for by clear-cut sincerity and an ability to keep the hearts of his characters beating...We feel the pulse of life in the Anson garden by the sea. On the beach, during the picnic, age looks back to youth with a trembling beauty, while youth grows stronger in its urge towards the future."

N.C. Hunter (1908-1971) was one of the leading English dramatists of the 1950s and early 1960s. Hunter's first success came in 1951: Waters of the Moon. A nuanced portrayal of faded gentility struggling for survival, the play opened at the Theatre Royal in London with a cast that included Dame Sybil Thorndike and Dame Edith Evans. The production ran for 835 performances and established Hunter reputation. As theatrical revolution-spearheaded by John Osborne and his school of "angry young men"-exploded around him, Hunter kept his head down and provided moving portraits of a people questioning their own purpose in chaotic post-war England.

In 2013, Mint produced Hunter's comedy, A Picture of Autumn, which had been presented for a single night only in London in 1951, for a one-night 'try-out' performance by the Repertory Players at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. Although it met with critical applause, the play was not picked up for a commercial run.

"If you've ever wondered how much damage a drama critic can do," Terry Teachout wrote in his review of A Picture of Autumn for the Wall Street Journal, "consider the case of N.C. Hunter. In the 1950s he was one of England's best-known playwrights, the author of school-of-Chekhov domestic dramas of middle-class loss and uncertainty that embodied the nagging anxieties of postwar audiences. Then Kenneth Tynan went to work on him with a rubber hose, sneering at "the vacuity of [his] attitude towards life" and dismissively comparing him to the angry-young-man playwrights like John Osborne whom Mr. Tynan saw as the salvation of British theater. Result: Mr. Hunter's plays slipped from sight. The Mint Theater Company's off-Broadway revival of A Picture of Autumn is one of a bare handful of Hunter productions to be presented in this country since A Day by the Sea was seen on Broadway in 1955. Never having seen or read a Hunter play, I was curious to find out whether he deserved Mr. Tynan's abuse. Not a bit of it: 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 top-drawer ensemble cast, is so strong that in a perfect world it would trigger a general revival of interest in Mr. Hunter's work."

"The Mint does for forgotten drama what the Encores! series does for musicals, on far more modest means" (The New York Times). Mint was awarded an OBIE for "combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition," and a special Drama Desk Award for "unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit." Ben Brantley in The New York Times Arts & Leisure hailed the Mint as the "resurrectionist extraordinaire of forgotten plays."

Performances will be Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 7:30pm with matinees Saturday & Sunday at 2:30pm. Special Wednesday Matinees on August 24th at September 21st at 2:30 PM. All performances are at The Beckett Theatre at Theater Row (410 West 42nd Street between 9th and Dyer Avenues).

Tickets for all performances are $57.50 (including $2.25 theater restoration fee) and can be purchased online at Telecharge.com, by phone at 212-239-6200 or in person at the Theatre Row Box Office.

For more information, visit minttheater.org.