Mint Theatre Company Will Return With Live Performances in 2022

Mint Theater Company (Jonathan Bank, Producing Artistic Director) will return to live performances in 2022 with a new production of The Daughter-in-Law by D.H. Lawrence, first produced by the Mint in 2003. Performances will begin February 3rd at New York City Center Stage (ii) (131 West 55th Street, between 6th & 7th Avenues), again under the direction of Martin Platt. This limited Off-Broadway engagement will continue through March 20th only. Opening Night is set for Thursday February 17th. Tickets now on sale! Cast will be announced shortly.

The Daughter-in-Law remains one of the Mint's most popular and successful productions. "Proof that theater history is worth excavating," The New York Times declared when naming it among the Best Productions of the Year. The original six-week run was extended to four months and received two Drama Desk nominations including Outstanding Revival.

"The Daughter-in-Law was an entry point for thousands of new audience members for the Mint in 2003. I'm eager to share this great play with thousands more theatergoers who have discovered the Mint since. This brilliant drama, by one of the most powerful and passionate authors of the 20th century, is a fitting way for the Mint to look both backwards and forward, as relaunch after a two-year absence, still committed to the pursuit of our mission, as we have been for the last 25-plus years," said Mr. Bank.

Before going live in 2022, Mint will offer FREE streaming of their archival recording of Hindle Wakes by Stanley Houghton, beginning November 30th, and continuing through December 26th. "We are starting our free streaming of Hindle Wakes on 'Giving Tuesday' as our way of saying thank you to the passionate theatergoers who continue to support the Mint. We made many new friends through our streaming during the pandemic, and I am eager to continue to serve this new, international audience," Bank said.

Hindle Wakes premiered in 1912, the same year as the coal-strike that inspired the events of The Daughter-in-Law, written in 1913. Houghton's comedy, like Lawrence's, finds its drama in sex-both plays are sparked by out-of-wedlock trysts. And both plays find drama in a society on the brink of great change.

Mint has been investing in creating professionally shot and edited full-length archival videos since 2013. No Zoom boxes or Computer-Generated Imagery, these are professional quality, high-definition, three-camera recordings of live performances, captured in the theater with live audiences. "If you've never seen a Mint show, I can assure you that the company's special qualities come through on video," said Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal. Hindle Wakes will be available at Mint's virtual theater, MintTheater.org, beginning at Noon on November 30th (Giving Tuesday). Admission is FREE.

For Hindle Wakes, Gus Kaikkonen directs a cast that features Jeremy Beck, Rebecca Noelle Brinkley, Emma Geer, Jonathan Hogan, Sara Carolynn Kennedy, Ken Marks, Brian Reddy, Sandra Shipley and Jill Tanner. Hindle Wakes has scenic design by Charles Morgan; costume design by Sam Fleming; lighting design by Christian DeAngelis; sound design and original music by Jane Shaw; prop design by Joshua Yocom; and hair & wigs design by Gerard Kelly. Casting by Stephanie Klapper, CSA. Dialects & dramaturgy by Amy Stoller

Reviewing the Mint production in 2018 for The New York Times, Laura Collins-Hughes wrote that Hindle Wakes "is a play about class, ambition and self-determination, but it's even more concerned with the suffocating effects of paternalism," making it the perfect companion piece for The Daughter-in-Law, which also tackles class, ambition and self-determination, but is even more concerned with the suffocating effects of mothers. Michael Feingold in the Village Voice said "...the revival, directed by Gus Kaikkonen, reaffirms the play as both well worth knowing in itself and particularly resonant in today's political climate."

The Daughter-in-Law was neither produced nor published in Lawrence's lifetime. It first appeared in print in 1965 when a complete edition of Lawrence's plays was published for the first time. Three years later The Royal Court presented the world premiere of The Daughter-in-Law. Michael Billington of The Guardian called the play "One of the great British dramas of the 20th century." Other British productions since have provided fresh occasions to celebrate Lawrence's achievement as a playwright, but in the US, only Mint Theater Company has staged The Daughter-in-Law. Lawrence's challenging idiomatic text and difficult Nottinghamshire dialect may have intimidated other producers. Mr. Platt will be joined by his 2003 creative team: Bill Clarke (sets), Holly Poe Durbin (costumes), Jeff Nellis (lighting), and Amy Stoller (dialects). Lindsay Jones will be designing sound; Stephanie Klapper will serve as casting director.

Written in 1913 and set against the background of the impending national coal strike of 1912, The Daughter-in-Law tells the story of Luther Gascoyne, a young miner, and his newly wed wife Minnie, a former governess. The tensions and misunderstandings they suffer due to their different backgrounds and expectations are exacerbated by the powerful influence of Luther's mother and brought to open conflict when it is discovered that Luther, before his marriage, made another woman pregnant. As the labor unrest comes to a boil, so does the simmering conflict between Luther and Minnie.

Reviewing the Mint's 2003 production, The New York Times wrote "The Daughter-in-Law, a play by D. H. Lawrence, written probably in 1913, about the time he was working on Sons and Lovers, is interesting in so many ways that it's hard to know where to begin. Lawrence's tale of a marriage strained by class conflict is so well-constructed, so brutally intimate and so psychologically shrewd that it has the prescience and dimensions of an important modernist work... There is not an ounce of coyness in Lawrence's script, and each character has a fully grounded and virtually unshakable sense of his or her own just deserts, and as these expectations bang into one another again and again, the pain that is created is both viscerally sharp and chronically throbbing. Rarely do you see lives so persuasively scraped raw onstage. The Daughter-in-Law is never less than fascinating. And in its portrayal of characters who, each painfully circumscribed by his or her own psychological qualities, beat on one another with merciless repetition and mounting frustration, it is reminiscent of no other playwright so much as O'Neill."

"Of all the countless off-Broadway troupes with which the side streets of Manhattan are dotted, none has a more distinctive mission-or a higher artistic batting average-than the Mint Theater Company, which 'finds and produces worthwhile plays from the past that have been lost or forgotten.' If that sounds dull to you, don't be fooled: I've never seen a production there that was a sliver less than superb. Rachel Crothers's Susan and God, John Galsworthy's The Skin Game, Harley Granville-Barker's The Madras House, N.C. Hunter's A Day by the Sea, Dawn Powell's Walking Down Broadway, Jules Romains's Doctor Knock, John Van Druten's London Wall: All these fine plays and others just as good have been exhumed by the Mint to memorable effect in the 13 years that I've been reviewing the company, a tribute to the uncanny taste and unfailing resourcefulness of Jonathan Bank, the artistic director," said Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal. Mint was awarded an OBIE Award 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."

Tickets for The Daughter-in-Law, which start at $35, are now on sale. You may purchase tickets online at NYCityCenter.org, by calling 212/581-1212, or in person at the New York City Center box office located at 131 West 55th Street (between 6th & 7th Avenues). There is a $2.50 facility fee on all tickets. Phone, mail, fax and internet orders incur a service charge.

City Center is a fully vaccinated venue. Approved masks must be worn by audience members, staff, and crew at all times while inside NY City Center. Upon arrival at the theater, vaccination proof must be presented along with your ticket. Please bring your government-issued photo ID and register in advance for one of the following forms of vaccination proof:

NYC COVID SAFE App for Android or iOS
NY State's Excelsior Pass
Health Pass by CLEAR
Your physical CDC-issued vaccination card

Photo Credit: Todd Cerveris