Mint Theater's American Premiere of CHAINS Opens Tomorrow

On March 11th 2020 Mint Theater Company completed casting for their next production, the long delayed American premiere of Chains by Elizabeth Baker, scheduled to open that May. The following day, March 12th 2020, every theater in New York was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, more than two years later, the complete cast as announced then will celebrate Opening Night on Thursday June 23rd, at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street). Performances will now continue through July 23rd.

Jenn Thompson directs a company that includes every one of those actors announced in 2020: Jeremy Beck, Kyle Cameron, Anthony Cochrane, Christopher Gerson, Olivia Gilliatt, Jeff Gurner, Laakan McHardy, Andrea Morales, Ned Noyes, Brian Owen, Elisabeth S. Rodgers, Claire Saunders, Peterson Townsend, Amelia White, and Avery Whitted.

Chains, the second offering in Mint's series "Meet Miss Baker," is Mint's latest effort in its ongoing commitment to create new life for neglected women playwrights. From Pulitzer-Prize winning plays by Zona Gale and Susan Glaspell, to forgotten works by Teresa Deevy, Rachel Crothers, Cicely Hamilton, Githa Sowerby, Hazel Ellis, Maurine Dallas Watkins, Lillian Hellman, Rose Franken and Dawn Powell, Mint has long been a champion of neglected plays by women.

"Meet Miss Baker'' began in 2019 with The Price of Thomas Scott, Baker's fascinating and frustrating portrayal of a man struggling with his conscience. "To its credit, the Mint has long rescued obscure plays by women, from Maurine Watkins's So Help Me God! and Dawn Powell's Walking Down Broadway to the rehabilitation of Teresa Deevy (who landed four productions over seven years). It's easy to see what drew the Mint Theater Company, that esteemed excavator of long-forgotten works, to The Price of Thomas Scott... The show brings up tantalizingly thorny issues of faith, hypocrisy, sacrifice and selfishness, they are like dark clouds hovering above the story," said Elisabeth Vincentelli in The New York Times. "Baker's play is a fascinating curio from another time, its revival here yet another feather in the Mint Theater's multi-feathered cap. The Price of Thomas Scott is the opener of a Mint series with the umbrella title 'Meet Miss Baker,' which will offer revivals of three plays by Elizabeth Baker over a period of two years, all of them receiving their American premieres. Judging from the quality of this first entry, the initiative is well worthwhile. So, bravo - and brava!," wrote Michael Portantiere, Talkin' Broadway/Broadway Radio

In 1909, Elizabeth Baker went from "obscure stenographer making five dollars a week" to "one of the most widely discussed playwrights in London" when Chains had a one-performance "try-out" at the Royal Court in London. The Times and The Globe both called Chains "remarkable." The next year, Baker's drama was running in repertory with the plays of Galsworthy, Barrie, Granville Barker and Shaw and was hailed as "the most brilliant and the deepest problem play by a modern British writer since Major Barbara" by The New Age.

Chains tells the stories of a few ordinary people yearning for a less ordinary life. Charley lives with his wife Lily in suburban London, sharing a cramped house with a lodger. Charley commutes daily to an office in London, his only pleasure is the tiny garden patch beside the house which gives little satisfaction. Charley's sister-in-law, Maggie, finds the drudgery of shop work so stifling that she plots an escape by marrying a kind man she doesn't love-an escape that can't provide the adventure she craves. Charley & Maggie are both shaken when Charley's lodger announces that he's tired of the grind and he's leaving for Australia-the day after tomorrow. His decision sends a tremor through the family that threatens to break the ties that bind Maggie and Charley to their ordinary lives. "There is a touch of genius in its absolute sincerity and pathos. Not one word too much, not one situation too extreme mars it," wrote The Sun, 1910.

Baker was applauded for her "keenness of observation, her powers of drawing characters from life, and her gift of writing dialogue that is natural and unforced," but much of the attention had an astonished, condescending tone. "How came Miss Elizabeth Baker, an unknown, inexperienced playwright, to give us a work so fresh, so unconventional, and in a sense, so stimulating as this? One is given to understand that she has not previously tried her hand at dramatic authorship, and that she has lived laborious days hitherto in a City office as a typewriter. "

Baker followed Chains with a versatile range of challenging and original plays that premiered on the stages of England's repertory theaters, as well as in the West End. These included Edith (1912), a one-act feminist comedy for the Women Writer's Suffrage League; the comic drama The Price of Thomas Scott (Gaiety Theatre - Manchester 1913 and Mint Theater Company 2019 - the American Premiere); and her scintillating business-world comedy Partnership (1917, Court Theatre). Long independent, Baker also found a mid-life romance with James Edmund Allaway, a widower who worked in the upholstery trade; she married him in 1915, at the age of forty. In 1922, the pair emigrated for two years to the Cook Islands.

"Thank heaven for the unwavering commitment of Jonathan Bank, the theatrical archaeologist whose Mint Theater Company unearths long-forgotten plays and imbues them with new life," declared The New York Times in response to a recent Mint production. Terry Teachout writing about Mint's production of Conflict in The Wall Street Journal said "I've reviewed 13 Mint productions since 2005, each one a gem-but it's still worth saying yet again that no New York-based theater company has a better batting average. The invisible hero of Conflict is, of course, Jonathan Bank, the Mint's producing artistic director. It's a wonder how he manages to track down so many plays that both deserve and richly re-pay a second hearing. Mr. Bank is one of a handful of theater artists in America whose name is an absolute guarantee of quality, and Conflict is further proof of his perfect taste." Mint Theater 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."

Performances will be Tuesday through Saturday evenings at 7:30 pm, with matinees Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. (PLEASE NOTE: No performances on Sunday June 19th, Friday June 24th, Tuesday July 12th. No matinee performance Wednesday June 8th. No evening performance on Wednesday June 29th or July 6th). Tickets are available online at Theatre Row Box Office. Tickets may also be purchased by phone at 212/714-2442, ext. 45 (Monday - Sunday. 12pm - 5pm), or in person at the Theatre Row Box Office Box Office (410 West 42nd Street) two hours prior to curtain. Additional service fees will apply for online or phone orders.

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. Theatre Row is committed to the safety of its patrons and staff. For the latest COVID safety information & requirements, please click here for our full COVID-19 safety policy.

For more information visit minttheater.org.

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