THE FATAL WEAKNESS by George Kelly to Conclude Mint Theater's Silver Lining Streaming Series

Mint Theater Company will conclude the highly popular Silver Lining Streaming Series with the on-demand streaming of the three-camera archival recording (filmed in HD!) of The Fatal Weakness by George Kelly, beginning Monday May 17th, and continuing through June 27th. The price of admission is FREE. NO PASSWORD REQUIRED! Closed captioning is now available for all of Mint's streaming productions.

Also currently available on demand are Yours Unfaithfully starring Todd Cerveris, Mikaela Izquierdo, Elisabeth Gray, Stephen Schnetzer, and Tony & Drama Desk Award nominee Max von Essen through June 13th; and A Picture of Autumn featuring Helen Cespedes, Christian Coulson, Barbara Eda-Young, Katie Firth, Jonathan Hogan, George Morfogen, Paul Niebanck, Mark Emerson, and Jill Tanner through June 27th.

Jesse Marchese directs a cast that features Cliff Bemis, Cynthia Darlow, Kristin Griffith, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Patricia Kilgarriff, and Victoria Mack. The Fatal Weakness has scenic design by Vicki R. Davis, costume design by Andrea Varga, lighting design by Christian DeAngelis, original music & sound design by Jane Shaw, and properties design by Joshua Yocom.

The Fatal Weakness tells the story of Ollie Espenshade, who, after 28 years of marriage is still an incurable romantic (her fatal weakness). Perhaps discovering that her husband is a lying cheat will cure her? George Kelly's last produced play is a smart comedy about romance, marriage and commitment. It opened in New York on November 19, 1946 produced by The Theatre Guild and starring the legendary Ina Claire. Although Claire's triumphant return to Broadway after a five-year absence garnered much of the press attention, Kelly's play turned more than a few critics' heads: "One of Kelly's best. It reveals keen understanding of character-an evening of genuine quality." wrote Ward Morehouse in The New York Sun. Richard Watts Jr. of the New York Post called The Fatal Weakness "so fresh in its observations, three-dimensional in its characters and human in its humor that it emerges as the first important new comedy of the season." The play went on to be hailed as "Best New Comedy" by George Jean Nathan's Honor List in Theatre Book of the Year, 1946-1947.

George Kelly (1887-1974), admired for his character-driven satires and gimlet-eyed plays of modern manners, led a distinguished career in the New York theatre from the 1910s through the 1940s. Starting out as an actor and writer for vaudeville one-acts, Kelly rose to the height of acclaim in the early 1920s, with plays that he both wrote and directed. Kelly followed his breakout 1922 theatrical satire The Torch Bearers with 1924's The Show-Off (which Heywood Broun called "the best comedy which has yet been written by an American"), as well as his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1925 psychological drama Craig's Wife. Although Kelly's commercial success declined steeply in the 1930s and 1940s, he produced some of his most striking and unconventional plays during these decades, including Philip Goes Forth (1931) and his two satiric dramas of marital infidelity: The Deep Mrs. Sykes (1945) and The Fatal Weakness (1946). Out of sync with sentimental postwar sensibilities, Kelly continued to write a number of unproduced plays as he shifted into semi-retirement with his longtime partner, William E. Weagly. In recent years, George Kelly has made an emphatic re-entrance upon New York and regional stages, while his "sharply insightful" (The New York Sun) plays of middle-class domestic life have also invited critical rediscovery. Once "allowed to pass unremarked" (as Mary McCarthy noted in a 1947 essay) as a significant American playwright, Kelly returns to delight, provoke and surprise new audiences.

Mint has been investing in creating professionally shot and edited full length, three-camera archival recordings filmed in HD since 2013. No Zoom boxes or Computer Generated Imagery - these are professional quality, high-definition recordings of live performances, captured in the theater with live audiences. Mint's recordings are meant for private viewing only and may not be screened for any other purpose. These recordings have been made available in partnership with the employees represented by Stage Directors & Choreographers Society, Actors' Equity Association and United Scenic Artists. Mint is proud to pay our artists.

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."

To learn more about Mint's On Demand Streaming, go to minttheater.org. The price of admission is FREE. NO PASSWORD REQUIRED!

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