1996-1998
QUALITY STREET
By J.M. Barrie

MR. PIM PASSES BY
By A.A. Milne

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
By George Aiken

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH
By Edith Wharton & Clyde Fitch

1999-2000
THE VOYSEY INHERITANCE
By Harley Granville Barker

ALISON’S HOUSE
By Susan Glaspell

MISS LULU BETT
By Zona Gale

2000-2001
WELCOME TO OUR CITY
By Thomas Wolfe

THE FLATTERING WORD &
A FAREWELL TO THE THEATRE
By George Kelly

& Harley Granville Barker

DIANA OF DOBSON’S
By Cecily Hamilton

2001-2002
RUTHERFORD AND SON
By Githa Sowerby

NO TIME FOR COMEDY
By S.N. Behrman

2002-2003
THE CHARITY THAT BEGAN AT HOME
By St. John Hankin
FAR AND WIDE
By Arthur Schnitzler

THE DAUGHTER-IN-LAW
By D.H. Lawrence

2003-2004
MILNE AT THE MINT
Two Plays by A.A. Milne

ECHOES OF THE WAR
By J.M. Barrie

2004-2005
THE LONELY WAY
By Arthur Schnitzler

THE SKIN GAME
By John Galsworthy

2005-2006
WALKING DOWN BROADWAY
By Dawn Powell

SOLDIER’S WIFE
By Rose Franken

SUSAN AND GOD
By Rachel Crothers

2006-2007
JOHN FERGUSON
By St. John Ervine

THE MADRAS HOUSE
By Harley Granville Barker

RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL
By St. John Hankin

2007-2008
THE POWER OF DARKNESS
By Leo Tolstoy

THE FIFTH COLUMN
By Ernest Hemingway

Q&A

An interview with director Jonathan Bank

How did you find this play?

Last year I promised that we would do a three-year exploration of the work of the Theatre Guild. I was leafing though A Pictorial History of the Theatre Guild and Ernest Hemingway’s name caught my eye, as you might imagine! The first thing I did was look up the production on the IBDB (Internet Broadway Database) and the author’s credit line further aroused my curiosity: “Book by Benjamin Glazer. Adapted from a play by Ernest Hemingway.” A little further inquiry revealed that Hemingway’s original play had been published and I got myself a copy.

What’s it about?

It’s the story of a counter-espionage agent in Madrid working on behalf of the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War. He wants to get out of a rotten business and live a happy, peaceful life with the woman he loves. Hemingway wrote, “If it has a moral it is that people who work for certain organizations have very little time for home life.” More than anything else, it’s a romance between two wonderfully idiosyncratic and complex people, set against the backdrop of the war. There is a political element, but the heart of the play is its romance, and the conflict this creates for its hero. Like all of Hemingway, it’s both autobiographical and not. He wrote it while he was in Spain, covering the war, and carrying on an affair with Martha Gellhorn, who eventually became his third wife. She was also there as a journalist; this was the first of many wars that she covered. The love interest in the play is obviously loosely based on Gellhorn.

Aren’t you claiming to be presenting the premiere of this play? If the Theater Guild produced it, then how is that possible?

The Guild produced an “adaptation” of the play by Benjamin Glazer, a Hollywood screenwriter (he wrote the screenplay for A Farewell To Arms). But the play that Hemingway wrote has never been produced—it was published, but not produced.

How did that happen?

It’s a long and complicated story. When the play was first written, in the fall of 1937, a number of producers were interested—but, for various reasons, no one was able to make it happen. One (Austin Parker) signed a contract but died in a plane crash before the ink was dry. Another (Joseph Losey) took an option but it lapsed when he was unable to raise the money. That takes us to August, 1938.

Hemingway became impatient—he felt that his drama was very topical, and he was eager for the play to be seen (or read) when it was most timely and relevant, so he let Scribner’s publish the play in the fall of 1938 in a volume along with his first forty-nine short stories.

So Scribner’s published the play even though it had never been produced?

Right. The publication stirred renewed interest in the play from producers, but I believe that after the play’s publication, Hemingway began to think of a Broadway production in the same way that he might think of a film version of one of his books—the play was in print as he wrote it and his readers could enjoy it forevermore on the page, no matter what happened on the stage.

Now Barney Glazer enters the picture, and he convinces Hemingway that the play needs “doctoring” and he’s the man for the job.

Why did the play need “doctoring”?

In my opinion, it didn’t; I hope our production will prove that.

CONTINUED