Mint Theater's FASHIONS FOR MEN Opens This Weekend

Mint Theater today announced the cast for their next production, Fashions For Men by Ferenc Molnár: Mark Bedard, Joe Delafield, Jeremy Lawrence, Rachel Napoleon, Annie Purcell, Kurt Rhoads, Michael Schantz, Maren Searle, John Seidman, Jill Tanner, John Tufts, and Gabra Zackman. Performances began February 3rd and continue through March 29th. Opening Night is Sunday March 1st (7pm) at Mint's home (311 West 43rd Street).

Davis McCallum, who staged the Mint's recent hit London Wall (also broadcast as the first show on PBS Thirteen's new series "Theatre Close-Up") as well as the 2012 Pulitzer-Prize winning play Water by the Spoonful at Second Stage; Samuel D Hunter's Pocatello and The Whale at Playwrights Horizons, will direct. Fashions For Men will have sets by Daniel Zimmerman, costumes by Martha Hally, lighting by Eric Southern, sound and original music by Jane Shaw and properties by Joshua Yocum.

Fashions For Men is a comedy of character by Ferenc Molnár, set in a high-class haberdashery in Budapest (serving both men and women). The shop's owner, Peter Juhasz, is a saintly beacon of decency who only sees the good in everyone - making him easy prey for the sinners who surround him. When his wife steals his last dollar and runs off with his top salesman, Peter is on his own, facing bankruptcy. Will he wise up and learn to protect himself from those who would take advantage of his goodness? Or will he persist in seeing the world through the rose-colored lens of his own compassion? "A comedy as fine and true as maternal devotion and as gentle as June sunshine after a rain," declared The Evening Mail.

The play was first produced at Budapest's National Theater in 1917. In 1922 it appeared on Broadway in an English translation by Benjamin Glazer, who had successfully translated Molnár's Liliom the previous year.

Fashions For Men turned out to be another Broadway triumph for Molnár. The New York Times praised the play as "a comedy of indescribable freshness and authenticity of character" that revealed "a fresh phase of [Molnár's] versatile genius." "A novel combination of continental sophistication and sentimental comedy, deft and amusing," exclaimed The New York Globe.

While nearly every review considered the production a success, critics struggled to make sense of the play's remarkable central character. Was Peter Juhasz a man of saintly goodness, or a docile fool? Descriptions of Molnár's protagonist ranged from "unworldly" and "benevolent" to "incompetent" and "pathetic." The Evening Mail called Juhasz "one of the most lovable persons the theater has given us in a long time," while Alexander Woollcott of The New York Herald confided that he "wished he would fall down and break his neck."

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár rose to international acclaim with his cosmopolitan fairy tales for adults. Molnár's plays inventively blended romantic fantasy and sardonic wit; pointed social satire and polished theatricality. Best known today for the mystical folk play Liliom (1922; the basis of the classic musical Carousel) and the sophisticated comedy The Guardsman, Molnár was immensely prolific as a journalist, short story writer, novelist, and the author of forty-two plays, many of which were performed widely throughout Europe and America. Molnár achieved international fame in 1907, with the publication of A Pál utcai fiúk (The Paul Street Boys), his classic novel of Budapest street gangs, as well as the sensational success of his play Az ördög (The Devil). A risqué supernatural comedy of intrigue, the play had four simultaneous productions in New York City alone.

Molnár's theatrical career flourished throughout the next decade. The Hungarian premieres of Liliom (1909), A Test?r (The Guardsman, 1910)) and A Farkas (The Tale of the Wolf, 1912) were followed by productions of these plays in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, among other European cities. The onset of World War I turned Molnar's efforts toward war correspondence. Despite Austria-Hungary's status as an enemy of the Allies, Molnár's balanced and humane observations of the war earned the distinction of publication in The New York Times. Following WWI, Molnár earned both popular affection and critical renown as "the best-known living Continental playwright in America" (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle). In 1921, Liliom marked a monumental success for the Theatre Guild, who also mounted the legendary 1924 production of The Guardsman, a comedy of marital role-playing starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. While stage productions (as well as many Hollywood film adaptations) of Molnár plays appeared regularly into the 1930s, the rise of Nazism impelled the playwright's 1940 emigration to the United States, where he lived in a room at New York's Plaza Hotel. Still a theatrical institution in America and Europe (though banned in Communist Hungary), the playwright died after a long illness in New York in 1952, survived by his third wife, actress Lili Darvas.

"The Mint does for forgotten drama what the Encores! series does for musicals, on far more modest means" (The New York Times). The 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 are Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Special added Wednesday Matinees on February 25th and March 25th at 2pm. PLEASE NOTE: There will be no performances on March 24th.

Tickets are $55 with some half-price tickets (CheapTix) and Premium Seats ($65) available for most performances. Performances take place on the Third Floor of 311 West 43rd Street.

Tickets are available by calling the Mint box office toll-free at 866-811-4111 or by going to www.minttheater.org where you can also see video, photos, and more!

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