By Harold Brighouse

GARSIDE’S CAREER tells the story of Peter Garside’s soaring flight from working engineer to member of Parliament, propelled by a ‘silver tongue’ and an insatiable fascination with his power to persuade:

“You don't know the glorious sensation of holding a crowd in the hollow of your hand, mastering it, doing what you like with it.”

Peter’s fiancé knows the danger of Peter’s fascination, “The Itch to speak is like the itch to drink, except that it’s cheaper to talk yourself tipsy.”

Mint’s production of GARSIDE’S CAREER will be the New York Premiere. The play had an extended run in Boston in 1919 (“admirable in construction, realistic in characterization, bright in wit and keen in satire”) and a New York production was announced, but never happened. Even in the U.K. this bright, witty, political satire seems to have completely disappeared.

Harold Brighouse is best known for his comedy HOBSON’S CHOICE, written a few years after GARSIDE and made immortal by David Lean’s 1954 film starring Charles Laughton as the bootmaker Hobson. Brighouse is one of a few authors associated with the Manchester School” so named for their association with the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester run by Annie Horniman. Other “Manchester School” plays first presented by Horniman at the Gaiety and later at the Mint include MARY BROOME by Allan Monkhouse (Mint Theatre Company, 2011) and HINDLE WAKES by Stanley Houghton (Mint Theatre Company, 2017).