This Saturday, December 12th, the Drama Desk, Lortel and Obie Award-winning Mint Theater Company will conclude its 2009 EnrichMINT Events, an exciting series of post-show discussions. The final entry will expore theater's fascination with women behaving badly, a topic which directly impacts on the Mint's current engagement of Maurine Dallas Watkins' So Help Me God! starring Kristen Johnston and Anna Chlumsky.
Saturday, December 12th after the matinee
"Sacred Monsters / Profane Dames:
Theater's Love Affair with Difficult Women"
Catherine Sheehy
From So Help Me God!'s Lily Darnley created by Maurine Dallas Watkins to her sister-in-Terpsichore-and-temperament Lily Garland of Twentieth Century created by Hecht and MacArthur just five years later and on to Margo Channing, Helen Lawson, Neely O'Hara, and even Bullets Over Broadway's Helen Sinclair, audiences simply dote on those over-the-top dramatic divas who drive lovers to distraction and directors to drink. What is our fascination with these women behaving badly?
Catherine Sheehy is Resident Dramaturg of
Yale Repertory Theatre and chair of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama. She teaches seminars in American Stage and Screen Comedy, Restoration and 18th-Century British Comedy, Comic Theory, the Collaborative Process, Models of Dramaturgy, and Satire. She is also a former associate editor of American Theatre and a former managing editor of Theater Magazine. She received her doctorate from Yale for her dissertation "If You Care to Blast for It: Excavating the Lost Comic Masterpieces of the American Canon."
The Mint Theater Company's second offering of the season, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins (the author of Chicago, the play upon which the musical is based), opened on December 7th to ecstatic reviews led by Ben Brantley of The New York Times who stated, "This deliciously sour comedy from 1929 provides the same startled pleasure that comes from discovering a good, pre-code Hollywood film." Kristen Johnston, two-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in "3rd Rock from the Sun," performs the role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy, played by Anna Chlumsky (My Girl films). Watkins' play was written 20 years before All About Eve. So Help Me God! is directed by Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank. The strictly limited engagement is set to run through December 20th.
The cast includes, in addition to Ms. Johnston and Ms. Chlumsky,
Brad Bellamy,
Catherine Curtin, Amy Fitts,
Jeremy Lawrence, Ned Noyes,
Kevin O'Donnell, John G. Preston,
Allen Lewis Rickman, Kraig Swartz,
Peter Van Wagner,
Matthew Waterson,
Margot White, and
John Windsor-Cunningham. Scenic design is by
Bill Clarke, with costume design by
Clint Ramos, lighting design by
Robert Wierzel, and sound design by
Jane Shaw.
This past June, the Mint presented a one-night reading of So Help Me God! starring two-time Emmy Award-winner
Kristen Johnston, which demonstrated that this lost work deserved a full production. Ms. Johnston reprises her role as Lily Darnley, "the star to whom all wagons are hitched," as the author describes her.
For this one production Mint has ventured out of the West 43rd Street space that has been its home for more than 15 years, to the
Lucille Lortel Theater in Greenwich Village, which has a larger stage and twice the seating capacity. Bank says, "With its rich history and wonderful theatrical atmosphere the
Lucille Lortel Theater is the perfect setting for this play about a classic (not classy) Broadway diva."
Kristen Johnston has appeared on and off-Broadway in The Women, Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Skin of Our Teeth.
Anna Chlumsky's NY stage credits include Unconditional (
LAByrinth Theater Company), and The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero (DR2), among others. Her films include In The Loop, Blood Car, My Girl 1 & 2, as well as the upcoming My Sweet Misery and Eavesdrop.
Mint Theater Company, "that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past" (Village Voice), has a celebrated reputation for re-discovering worthy but neglected gems and has brought new vitality to timeless but timely plays since 1992. The Mint was awarded an Obie for "combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition." Mint was awarded a special Drama Desk Award for "unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit."
The
Lucille Lortel Theater is located at 121 Christopher Street. Performances for So Help Me God! are Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets are $55. To purchase tickets, visit TicketCentral.com or call 212/279-4200.
Visit
www.minttheater.org.
