RUTHERFORD & SON
By Githa Sowerby
Directed By Richard Corley
Performances begin Feb. 4th!
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David Van Pelt and Robert Hogan from Mint's 2001 production of Rutherford & Son. Both actors will be returning in 2012.
THE STORY
John Rutherford rules home and business with an iron fist, a tyrant who inspires fear in his workers and hatred in his grown children. Now rebellion is brewing. His eldest son, working in secret has discovered a process that could save the firm, cutting costs by one third—but he refuses to share it with his father unless he “gets his price.”
Written 100 years ago by Githa Sowerby, “this acute play shows how by striking hard bargains and always winning, a man may lose everything. The play is as skillful as blown glass. It is a subtle meditation on ownership, justice, and loyalty” wrote Kate Kellaway in The Observer, reviewing the National Theater’s revelatory 1994 production. Reviewing the same production, Charles Spencer wrote in the Daily Telegraph, “It is far better than most of Shaw and easily stands comparison with another Edwardian masterpiece, Harley Granville Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance…A great play has been reclaimed.”
HISTORY
Rutherford & Son was scheduled for only four performances when it opened at London’s Royal Court Theatre on January 31, 1912. Critical response was so enthusiastic the play quickly transferred to the West End. “One of the very best, strongest, deftest, and altogether most masterly family dramas that we have had for a long time from any one, however famous,” wrote one London critic. Productions were soon slated across Europe and America.
The New York premiere in 1912 stunned American critics: “A play that carries conviction in every line—that leaves no doubt that it was written out of a fullness of knowledge of the life and people with which it deals,” wrote The New York Times.
