The off-Broadway Mint Theatre is currently playing host to a revival of N.C. Hunter's "A Day by the Sea." David Cote of Time Out New York filed the following review.
Few playwrights are entirely free of Anton Chekhov’s influence, but not many wear their influences quite as openly as N.C. Hunter did.
It’s one thing to have a doctor who’s both an idealist and drunkard, but when characters philosophize about the world in five hundred years, you’re begging for unflattering comparisons with the Russian master.
N.C. Hunter’s respectable career in 1950s London theater was overshadowed by the work of “angry young men - John Osborne and others. His plays emphasize emotional repression and genteel disenchantment among the landed upper-middle class. Chekhov echoes are hard to ignore: country settings, lots of nostalgia and pathos by the yard. Of course, there are worse talents to ape, and Hunter is a sensitive observer of English quirk and pluck.
The Mint Theater Company’s sturdy revival and fine cast, directed by Austin Pendleton, navigates the witty banter and stiff-upper-lipness with vibrant grace. Our hero is Julian, tartly played by Julian Elfer, a prickly bureaucrat who at age 40 seems destined for lifelong bachelorhood. There is a rueful widow with a painful past, played by Katie Firth. As for the boozy doctor, that’s an excellent Philip Goodwin, all living at or visiting Julian’s mother’s house on the coast.
"A Day by the Sea" is a melancholy study of middle-age malaise leavened by flashes of dry humor, equal parts sunny and shaded.
Time has perhaps been kind to Hunter, even if this pleasant revival doesn’t wash previous criticism away with the tide.