Johnny No-Trump

Johnny No-Trump is a play written by Mary Mercier which ran for one performance on Broadway.

Johnny No-Trump opened at the Cort Theatre on October 8, 1967 and ran for 5 previews and one regular performance. Directed by Joseph Hardy, it starred James Broderick, Sada Thompson, Pat Hingle, Don Scardino and, making her Broadway debut, Bernadette Peters.

Johnny No Trump was revived by the Equity Library Theater (New York) in 1970,The Cleveland Play House in 1972, and Iglesia's Theater Club (New York) in 1975.

Johnny, a teen-aged young man, tries to come to terms with himself and his family. He wants to leave school to be a poet, to the dismay of his schoolteacher mother. The play takes place in February 1965, in a small Long Island, New York town. The characters consist of 16-year-old Johnny Edwards; Florence Edwards, his mother; Alexander Edwards, her estranged husband; Harry Armstrong, Johnny's uncle; and Bettina, a "very grown-up" 15-year-old neighbor.

In his review in The New York Times, critic Clive Barnes wrote: "There are times when the characters...seem to be talking with absolute truthfulness...within seconds the play... is offering slick gibberish." Barnes wrote after it closed "...I regret [it] was abruptly taken off by its producer before it had a chance to get a word-of-mouth resuscitation."Walter Kerr, also in The New York Times, wrote that Mercier "is plainly talented, she is already capable of a blunt and crackling speech that insists upon being listened to. ... To compound the disaster, the production was superior at every level: director Joseph Hardy displayed a fresh sensibilty that coaxed an altogether unfamiliar reality – at once supple and hardheaded – out of a familiar kind of domestic crisis. ... There was ample treasure worth finding."

The play has been discussed in several books, including Shoptalk: Conversations About Theater and Film With Twelve Writers by Dennis Brown (1993); Broadway's Beautiful Losers by Marilyn Stasio (1972); On Stage: The Making of a Broadway Play by Susan Jacobs (1967); and The Season by William Goldman (1969). Goldman calls Johnny No-Trump "The best new American play of the season".

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