Hemingway's Only Play to Debut Off-Broadway

This seems to be the season for new plays by dead writers, according to the New York Sun. Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, a comedy written in 1898, was exhumed and adapted by David Ives for the Broadway stage. Now Ernest Hemingway is getting his due. The off-Broadway Mint Theater is mounting the first "faithful" production of The Fifth Column, the only play by Mr. Hemingway.

More from the Sun:

The story of why "The Fifth Column" has been neglected is a complicated one, involving several mishaps, an inept Hollywood screenwriter, and a 1940 Broadway production of a bastardized version of the play.

"Ernest absolutely disinherited it and had nothing to do with it," Hemingway's biographer, A.E. Hotchner, said of the Broadway production. "I think he was glad when it closed prematurely."

Hemingway wrote "The Fifth Column" in 1937, when he was living at the Hotel Florida in Madrid, covering the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. The play depicts the tense and dangerous existence inside the hotel, which is simultaneously occupied by journalists, counterespionage agents, and members of General Francisco Franco's "fifth column" — spies for the rebels within Madrid.

According to the artistic director of the Mint, Jonathan Bank, Hemingway wanted the play to call New Yorkers' attention to the urgency of the situation in Spain. (America was officially neutral, but many Americans, including many prominent writers and artists, supported the Republic.) However, early attempts to mount a production failed. The first producer who signed a contract died in a plane crash on his way to audition actors in Los Angeles. Another wasn't able to raise enough money. In 1938, Hemingway decided simply to publish the play, as part of a collection called "The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories."