Mint Theater announces NY Premiere of Garside’s Career by Harold Brighouse, with Daniel Marconi in the title role
Posted by: Official_Press_Release 04:06 pm EST 11/19/24

Mint Theater Company
Announces the New York Premiere of
Garside's Career
By Harold Brighouse
Directed by Matt Dickson

Daniel Marconi (Sweeney Todd) Will Play the Title Role

This Limited Off-Broadway Engagement Runs February 1st through March 15th at Theatre Row

Opening Night Is Set for February 20th

Tickets on Sale Now

Mint Theater Company (Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director) today announced the New York Premiere of Garside's Career by Harold Brighouse ( Hobson's Choice), directed by Matt Dickson, beginning performances February 1st for a limited engagement. Daniel Marconi (Tobias in the recent revival of Sweeney Todd) will essay the title role of Peter Garside. Additional cast and design team will be announced shortly.

Mint's production will be the New York Premiere. The play had an extended run in Boston in 1919 ("admirable in construction, realistic in characterization, bright in wit and keen in satire") and a New York production was announced, but never happened. Even in the U.K. this bright, witty, political satire seems to have completely disappeared. This Off-Broadway engagement at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street) will begin February 1st for a limited run through March 15th. Opening Night is set for Thursday February 20th. Tickets from $39 are now on sale at minttheater.org.

Artistic Director Jonathan Bank says, "One of the reasons I was drawn to producing older plays in the first place is they can show how today's alarming issues have usually been around for ages. Working on them (or seeing them) helps put things in perspective. ‘If there's one thing you learn by going regularly to the Mint,' a critic* once wrote, ‘it's that the world has changed less than you think.' Garside's Career is especially deft at making that point, using a good deal of humor and a little sex too. Written 110 years ago, it's a story about the intoxicating feeling that candidate Peter Garside has when commanding a crowd from the top of a soapbox, "the glorious sensation of holding a crowd in the hollow of your hand," and the problems this creates for his fiancé, his family and his constituents."
(*Jason Zinoman, The New York Times, 1/30/2011, writing about Mint's production of What the Public Wants by Arnold Bennett)

Garside's Career tells the story of Peter Garside's soaring flight from working engineer to member of Parliament, propelled by a ‘silver tongue' and an insatiable fascination with his power to persuade: "You don't know the glorious sensation of holding a crowd in the hollow of your hand, mastering it, doing what you like with it." Peter's fiancé knows the danger of Peter's fascination, "The itch to speak is like the itch to drink, except that it's cheaper to talk yourself tipsy."

Daniel Marconi's Broadway credits include Tobias in Sweeney Todd opposite Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford, Michael Banks in Mary Poppins. Off-Broadway: The Mountains Look Different (Mint Theater), The Butcher Boy (Irish Rep). Select Regional: The Outsiders (world premiere at La Jolla), Tick, Tick… Boom! (George Street), Newsies (Stages St. Louis). Numerous TV and film credits including "Bull," "The Blacklist," "Boardwalk Empire," and "Law and Order."

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
HAROLD BRIGHOUSE (1882 – 1958), "one of prewar northern England's most respected but neglected playwrights" (The Guardian), was a prominent member of the Manchester School of dramatists, alongside Allan Monkhouse (author of Mary Broome, produced by the Mint in 2012) and Stanley Houghton (author of Hindle Wakes, produced by the Mint in 2017). He wrote over 30 plays, including his most famous work, Hobson's Choice, which premiered in New York in 1915 and was adapted into an acclaimed 1954 film directed by David Lean and starring Charles Laughton. Brighouse was born in Eccles, Lancashire in 1882. His father, John Southworth Brighouse, was a manager for a cotton-spinning business and prominent Liberal who influenced some of his son's more politically charged plays. Brighouse won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School, but at seventeen he left school and went to work as an assistant buyer in his father's firm, which was located near a theater. He began to write after watching "an outrageously bad play" and feeling that he could do better. His first produced play, The Doorway, was presented in 1909 by Annie Horniman's Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, where he began his playwriting career. Brighouse described himself as "essentially a regional writer," and his most successful and well-known plays, including The Odd Man Out (1912), The Northerners (1914), The Game (1916), Zack (1916), and What's Bred in the Bone (1927) are comedies of north-country manners noted for their sophisticated understanding of human nature, deft weaving of drama and comedy, memorable characters, and witty dialogue. He was, particularly, a master of the one-act form — and his early short play, The Price of Coal (1909), ran for two years as a curtain raiser in London. Brighouse's plays began to be rediscovered, in England, in the 1970s and continue to surprise and delight audiences with their craft, humor, and relevance.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Born in Waco, Texas, Matt Dickson bounced around between Louisville Kentucky, the high plains of West Texas, and Cambridge England, before going to college at Boston University, and ultimately landing in New York City in 2006. He is a freelance director with a focus on new work, classics, and musicals. He is currently pioneering the medium of digital performance. Upcoming credits include: Where Did We Sit On The Bus? by Brian Quijada (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Metamorphic by Dolores Díaz (digital workshop w/WildWind Performance Lab, Texas Tech), and Mike Pence Sex Dream by Dan Giles (digital workshop w/Ensemble Studio Theatre). Recent credits: Brontë by Polly Teale (digital stream w/Stella Adler NYU), Machinal (Strasberg Institute), Selkie by Krista Knight (Dutch Kills, Wild Project), The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window (NYU Grad), We the People: America Rocks! (Theatreworks, US Tour), Disco Pigs (Drama League DirectorFest, Sheen Center), Lorca's Blood Wedding (Rutgers University), The Adventures of Minami: A Robot from Japan who Makes You Feel Safe when Loneliness Is Palpable: Part 1 by Leah Nanako Winkler (The Brick, in partnership with The Dramatists Guild Fund), The Cider House Rules, Part 1: Here In St. Cloud's (Rutgers University), Where Did We Sit On The Bus? by Brian Quijada (Kennedy Center), Charles Mee's A Perfect Wedding (Atlantic Conservatory), Amy Fox's Silver Men (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Bizet's Carmen (New York Opera Exchange), Aykroyd (Fordham University), Kid Prince & Pablo by Brian Quijada (Ars Nova, ANT Fest), Jahna Ferron Smith's Sir (2017 Winner Samuel French Festival), Leah Nanako Winkler's Taisetsu Na Hito (2014 Winner Samuel French Festival), The Man-Made Rock (4th St. Theatre), and Krista Knight's Coach Darling (F*It Club). Regional credits include: Lanford Wilson's Home Free! and Michael John Garcés Audiovideo (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Matt has developed new work with playwrights such as Will Arbery, Hilary Bettis, Amy Fox, Dan Giles, Mara Nelson-Greenberg, Mary Hamilton, Lily Houghton, Nadja Leonard-Hooper, Claire Kiechel, Krista Knight, Dan McCabe, Stacy Osei-Kuffour, Christina Quintana, CQuintana, Abby Rosebrock, Brian Quijada, Jen Silverman, Jahna Ferron-Smith, Will Snider, Leah Nanako Winkler and Zhu Yi, at companies such as Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, Page 73, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Mint, Primary Stages, The Flea, New York Opera Exchange, INTAR, The Lark, and F*It Club. He has served as Associate or Assistant Director to Jack O'Brien, Daniel Sullivan, Kevin Moriarty, Vivienne Benesch, Mark Wing-Davey, Anne Kauffman, Hunter Foster, Gordon Greenberg, Denis Jones, Joe Grifasi and others. He has led workshops at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Long Island University and Boston University College of Fine Arts. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at NYU Stella Adler, teaching "Theatremaking in the Digital Age." He is a 2017 Drama League Directing Fellow, a Jonathan Alper Directing Fellow (Manhattan Theatre Club) and a proud member of Ensemble Studio Theatre. As an actor he has appeared on Broadway in War Horse and The Coast of Utopia (Lincoln Center Theater), and most recently Off-Broadway in Nicky Silver's Too Much Sun (Vineyard Theatre). B.F.A. from Boston University.

ABOUT MINT THEATER COMPANY
"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.' 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."

TICKET INFORMATION:
Tickets for Garside's Career, which are on sale now, start at $39 and may be purchased online at minttheater.org, by phone by calling 212/714-2442, ext. 45 (Tuesday - Sunday from 12 noon to 5PM), or in person at Theatre Row Box Office (located at 410 West 42nd Street). Service fees will apply for online or phone orders.

Performances will be Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday evenings at 7pm with matinees Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday at 2pm. Added performances Wednesday evenings 2/19 & 3/12 at 7pm. No performance on 2/21. Theatre Row, located at 410 West 42nd Street (between 9th & 10th Avenues), is a fully accessible venue: all bathrooms are accessible; there is an elevator to all floors; the bar and lounge are fully accessible; assisted listening devices are available.
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