Mint Theater Company to Hold 'Further Reading' of WATERS OF THE MOON

Mint Theater Company will present a one-night "Further Reading" of Waters of the Moon by N.C. Hunter on Monday August 15th (7pm) at The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row (home to Mint's current production, Hunter's A Day By The Sea, opening August 25). Mint's "Further Readings" program, an ongoing series of concert-style play readings, offers audiences an opportunity to delve deeper into the work of some of our favorite playwrights.

Mint Associate Director Jesse Marchese (The Fatal Weakness) will direct a cast that features Carolyn McCormick ("Law & Order;" Equus), Paxton Whitehead (The Importance of Being Earnest, The Crucifer of Blood), Delphi Harrington (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Roundabout), Helen Cespedes (A Picture of Autumn), Cynthia Darlow (The Fatal Weakness), Ben Diskant (Hit the Wall), Clemmie Evans (The New Morality), Michael Frederic (The New Morality), Aedin Moloney (Women Without Men), and Hans Tester (Far and Wide).

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.

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 (Carolyn McCormick), 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."

Waters of the Moon will take place for one-night only on Monday, August 15th at 7pm, at The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street). Tickets are $25. To purchase tickets visit minttheater.org/further-readings or call 212/315-9434.

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