Diana of Dobson's

On Friday, October 23rd at 7 PM, Mint will present a reading of DIANA OF DOBSON’S, introduced by J. Ellen Gainor of Cornell University, who suggested the play to us in 2001. 25 years ago, Mint produced Cicely Hamilton’s DIANA OF DOBSON’S. The New York Times called the play “surprisingly fresh entertainment”, The Village Voice declared it “another tasty sprig in the Mint’s growing patch of discoveries…Though demonstrably indebted to Shaw and Granville Barker, it has a feisty charm of its own.” Most enthusiastic of all was the NY Post, which called it “an exciting discovery of the Mint, beautifully acted and remarkably moving. Diana is a willful and wonderful young woman driven to despair by her oppressively dreary life as a ‘live-in’ shop girl working in Dobson’s Drapery Emporium, a clothing store outside of London. The unexpected and rather modest legacy of a distant relative provides her a brief window of escape. Diana, yearning for a life of luxury and power, extravagantly decides to treat herself to “a crowded hour of glorious life.” Passing herself off as a wealthy widow on holiday in Switzerland, she attracts the attention of an undisciplined, but good-hearted gent who mistakenly believes that Diana might offer a way out of his own straitened circumstances. At the end of her ‘hour’ when her legacy has been spent, the truth comes out and the sparks fly. Diana is left alone to return to the drudgery that she was so eager to escape.