The Fifth Column: World Premiere of Ernest Hemingway's drama.

The Mint Theater Company will present the long-delayed World Premiere production of The Fifth Column by Ernest Hemingway -not the dramatization of a novel or story -but a drama written for the stage by one of America�s most celebrated authors. Jonathan Bank, Mint Artistic Director, will direct. Performances begin 26 Feb 2008.

Hemingway wrote The Fifth Column in 1937 when he was in Madrid working as a correspondent during the Spanish Civil War. �While I was writing the play the Hotel Florida, where we lived and worked, was struck by more than thirty high explosive shells,� Hemingway recounted in his introduction to the play when it was published the following year. �If it is a good play, perhaps those thirty shells helped write it.�

The play revolves around the personal and political passions of Philip Rawlings, a counter-espionage agent living in the Hotel Florida and working for the Loyalist cause. �It has the defects of having been written in war time,� Hemingway conceded, �But if being written under fire makes for defects, it may also give a certain vitality.�

"It was written to be produced,� he continued, �But one producer died after he had signed a contract to put it on and had gone to California to cast it. Another producer signed another contract and had trouble raising money. Reading it over I thought it read well, no matter how it might play and so decided to put it in with this book of stories [The First Forty-Nine Stories 1938]. �Later some one may want to produce it.�

Indeed, two years later in 1940, The Theatre Guild did mount a production under the direction of Lee Strasberg. After standing fast for over a year and declining to consider making any revisions, Hemingway concluded that he would never see the play produced unless he gave way�and then he gave way entirely�allowing the Guild to hire a Hollywood screenwriter to doctor the script rather than re-writing himself. The produced play was so significantly altered that it was billed as �Adapted by Benjamin Glazer from the published play by Ernest Hemingway.�

Hemingway declined ever to see the bastardized play in performance. In a letter to the producer written after the play�s opening he said that no financial rewards that the production might offer would compensate for the damage he had done to his reputation by allowing Glazer to re-write his play.

The play had a respectable run of eighty-seven performances, foreshortened in part by Franchot Tone�s decision to return to Hollywood rather than extending his contract. On 18 May 1940 the play closed�and has barely been heard of since.

Mint Theater Company will present, for the first-time ever, The Fifth Column as it was originally written.

In 2001, the Mint was awarded an Obie grant for �combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition,� and in 2002 a special Drama Desk Award for �unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit.�