Many New York Off- and Off-Off Broadway theater companies do a fine job of presenting classic plays and musicals, including the Classic Stage Company, Encores!, Musicals Tonight, the Pearl Theatre Company and the York Theatre Company—but no company does classic theater programming more innovatively than the Mint Theater Company on W. 43rd Street.

Under the motto “lost plays found here” the Mint stages two or three productions a year of classic (as in 50–150 years old) plays you probably have never heard of (John Ferguson, The Power of Darkness, Return of the Prodigal, Madras House). In many instances you have never heard of the playwrights either (Arthur Schnitzler, Rachel Crothers, St. John Ervine) or if you have heard of them, it is due to their novels not their plays (Ernest Hemmingway, D. H. Lawrence, Leo Tolstoy). Due to the fine efforts of Artistic Director Jonathan Bank many formerly “lost plays” as well as “lost playwrights” (our favorite is Harley Granville Barker) have now become household words in the New York theater community.