The Mint Theatre Company in New York, under the artistic direction of Jonathan Bank, specialises in reviving plays from the past which have been lost or forgotten. The archive is extremely impressive and includes such playwrights as John Galsworthy, J M Barrie, D H Lawrence, Harley Granville Barker, Arthur Schnitzler, Ferenc Molnar, to name but a few. Production values are high and, if I lived in New York, I would certainly be a regular theatregoer.
Jonathan Bank’s latest discovery is a play by Betty Smith, famed American author of the semi-autobiographical novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which was published in 1943. Twelve years earlier she had written a play, Becomes A Woman, which won an award but has never been published nor been staged until now. The production is directed by Britt Berke.
Francie Nolan is a shy working class 19-year-old, who wants to better herself. She works in the sheet music section of a large five and dime store and sings the songs customers want to hear before they purchase the sheet. She is afraid of men who make unwanted passes at her until she falls in love with the no-good son of the rich owner of the store.
She is abandoned by him and her family when she becomes pregnant.
She has strong confrontations with her lover and her boss in the final act and becomes a woman who does what she wants to do and not what men and society in the 1930s expect her to do. I was reminded of Fanny Hawthorne in Stanley Houghton’s 1912 play, Hindle Wakes, which Mint Theatre has also revived.
The play is flawed and not all the roles are well cast. The best performance is by Emma Pfitzer Price, making her Off-Broadway debut as Francie.
Betty Smith’s Becomes A Woman can be watched free on line. For more information follow this link.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website. 
