Mint Theater Adds One More Performance To SO HELP ME GOD 12/20

Mint Theater Company (Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director) has added one additional performance, Sunday December 20th at 7 pm, to accommodate the demand for their acclaimed production of So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins (the author of Chicago, the play upon which the musical is based) at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher Street). Kristen Johnston, two-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in "3rd Rock from the Sun," stars as 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's play was written 20 years before the more famous film, All About Eve. Jonathan Bank directs.

"The deliciously sour So Help Me God!, a long-lost comedy from 1929, provides the same startled pleasure that comes from discovering a good, pre-code Hollywood film. Like those movies, Maurine Dallas Watkins's So Help Me God! derives much of its energy from a white-hot cynicism that's as angry as it is amused. A backstage story of a back-stabbing diva (played here with a gourmand's relish by Kristen Johnston), this strychnine-laced bonbon makes other theater satires of its era look like fluffy marshmallows. - Ben Brantley, The New York Times

"When will a smart, talented producer realize that the actress Kristen Johnston is her generation's Carol Burnett and build a revue around her considerable comic gifts? Like the flame-haired comedian in her best TV sketches, Johnston is so physically graceful that she can play awkward like nobody's business. She's strongest when she portrays monsters who know they're not smarter than everyone else, just more willful. Which is precisely why her Lily Darnley, in this minor comic gem from 1929 (presented by the Mint, directed by Jonathan Bank), is so appealing: we know Lily's a malefactor when it comes to protecting her place in the theatre. We know, too, that no matter how badly she behaves, in the end, she'll get her way."- Hilton Als, The New Yorker

"As the ego-, nympho- and dipsomaniacal diva at the nucleus of So Help Me God!, Kristen Johnston is a marvel. The character is Lily Darnley, a Broadway glamour-puss who clings to center stage with sharp, bloodied claws; and Johnston takes her tasty lemon drop of a role and sucks it for all it's worth. Equal parts broad and sword, she slices through the play's Prohibition-era veneer to carve out a timeless image of tempestuous vanity: the I of the hurricane." - Adam Feldman, Time Out New York

"Underneath the laughs, Watkins casts a gimlet eye on humanity -- she also wrote the play upon which the musical Chicago was based, after all. There's no rosy optimism, no romanticizing the stage camaraderie here, and art for art's sake is for suckers....Watkins' play may be 80 years old, but it hasn't aged one bit." - Elisabeth Vincentelli, The New York Post

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. Tickets are $55. To purchase tickets, go to TicketCentral.com or call 212/279-4200.

Visit www.minttheater.org

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