Mint Theater Company has released the first production photographs of Phyl, a 1913 comedy by Cicely Hamilton that was banned before its first performance and never published. Lily Ganser plays the title role in Britt Berke's staging, now in previews at Theatre Row ahead of an October 22 opening.
Todd Cerveris's pictures show the household where Phyllis Chester earns her keep as governess to two badly behaved sisters, neither family nor servant, and lonelier than either. A row with her employer costs her the job, and the play follows what a young woman with no money and no position does with the freedom that leaves her.
The play's own history is the reason the Mint went looking for it. Phyl was due to open at Oxford in 1913, until the university's Vice-Chancellor stopped the performance, although the Lord Chamberlain had licensed the script without asking for a single change. It premiered in Brighton instead and went on to Edinburgh, Manchester and, in 1914, Chicago, with the word BANNED in nearly every newspaper headline along the way. No edition ever followed; the company found the text in the Lord Chamberlain's archive at the British Library.
Hamilton, an actor, novelist and campaigner for women's suffrage, is best remembered for Diana of Dobson's, which the Mint staged 25 years ago and will revisit as a reading on October 23 at 7 p.m.
The company is Tessa Bilmes, Jennifer Blood, Curzon Dobell, Katie Firth, Lily Ganser, Betsy Hogg, Livvy Marcus, Anthony Michael Martinez and Charlotte Van Ledtje. Sets are by Brittany Vasta, costumes by Alicia J. Austin, lighting by M.L. Geiger and sound by Jane Shaw, with props by Chris Fields, dialects and dramaturgy by Amy Stoller and intimacy direction by Leana Gardella.
Phyl runs through November 7 at Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street, and opens the Mint's season; The Fanatics by Miles Malleson follows. Tickets are available from MintTheater.org.
