Jim Parsons, Katie Holmes and More Will Lead Kenny Leon's OUR TOWN Revival
Our Town will begin previews on Tuesday, September 17 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.
By: Nicole Rosky for Broadway World
Grover's Corners, here they come! The new Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town directed by Tony Award-winner Kenny Leon, announces the play will feature 28 actors led by Emmy, Golden Globe & Screen Actors Guild Award-winner Jim Parsons as “Stage Manager”, Zoey Deutch as “Emily Webb”, Katie Holmes as “Mrs. Webb”, Obie & Audelco Award-winner and Drama Desk-nominee Billy Eugene Jones as “Dr. Gibbs”, Tony & Grammy Award-nominee Ephraim Sykes as “George Gibbs”, Tony & Drama Desk Award-nominee and Emmy-Award-winner Richard Thomas as “Mr. Webb”, Tony & Drama Desk-nominee Michelle Wilson as “Mrs. Gibbs”, 2021 Special Tony Award-winner and Drama Desk-nominee Julie Halston as “Mrs. Soames”, Donald Webber Jr. as “Simon Stimpson”, as well as Ephie Aardema, Heather Ayers, Willa Bost, Bobby Daye, Safiya Kaijya Harris, Doron JéPaul, Shyla Lefner, Anthony Michael Lopez, John McGinty, Bryonha Marie, Kevyn Morrow, Hagan Oliveras, Noah Pyzik, Sky Smith, Bill Timoney, Matthew Elijah Webb and Nimene Sierra Wureh. The final two cast members will be announced at a later date.
Our Town will begin previews on Tuesday, September 17 ahead of an opening on Thursday, October 10 at the Barrymore Theatre (243 West 47th) for a strictly limited engagement.
The design team for Our Town will include scenic design by Tony Award-winner Beowulf Boritt (New York, New York; Act One), costume design by Tony Award-nominee and Drama Desk Award- winner Dede Ayite (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding; Suzan Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog), lighting design by Tony Award-nominee Allen Lee Hughes (Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog; A Soldier’s Play), sound design by Tony Award-nominee Justin Ellington (Ohio State Murders; for colored girls…), casting by Jim Carnahan, with Kate Wilson (The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window) as the dialect coach.
This will be the first major Broadway revival of the classic play in nearly 25 years. Our Town, the timeless drama of life in the village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, has become an American classic with universal appeal. Thornton Wilder’s most frequently performed play, Our Town appeared on Broadway in 1938 to wide acclaim, and won the Pulitzer Prize. Kenny Leon, hailed as a “maestro” by The Washington Post and noted by The New Yorker as having “a flair for showmanship and sizzle” is one of the most accomplished directors of the American stage. In recent years, he has staged powerhouse and highly acclaimed productions of Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch by Ossie Davis, Suzan Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog, Ohio State Murders by Adrienne Kennedy, A Soldier’s Play, Fences, American Son and two revivals of A Raisin in the Sun garnering him a Tony Award for Best Director. In May, he will direct the Broadway production of Home by Samm-Art Williams presented by Roundabout Theatre Company at the Todd Haimes Theatre.
“Thornton Wilder’s Our Town - in my mind stands at the top of the Mount Rushmore of great American Theatre,” said Kenny Leon. “I feel blessed and fortunate to have gained the trust of The Wilder estate to present this classic to another generation of theatre lovers. It’s long been a burning desire to collaborate on a Broadway production of such magnitude that speaks so beautifully and intimately to all people about our shared time on the planet.”
Speaking for the Wilder family, the playwright’s nephew, Tappan Wilder said: “Shortly before the Broadway opening of Our Town in 1938, my uncle, Thornton Wilder, described it to the press in these words: ‘You might say that it is a kind of an attempt at a complete immersion into everything about a New Hampshire village which, I hope, is gradually felt by the audience to be an allegorical representation of all life.’ In the first twenty months after the Broadway production closed, his drama about living and dying in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, with a minimal set of tables, chairs, and a ladder, would be performed in 658 American communities—in forty- seven of the then forty-eight states — as well as in four Canadian provinces and several European countries. This universal embrace of the play has never ended. Even now, Our Town, with its message about the transcendent value of our growing up, our living, and our dying, is performed at least once every day somewhere in the world. Its ‘allegorical representation of all life’ really does unite us all. I got to know the play on an intimate level for the first time in 1955, when, as a high school freshman, I played Professor Willard on a postage-stamp-sized stage in our gymnasium. The responsibility of performing my uncle’s words left me a frightened puppy.
Almost seventy years later, I am once again frightened, but not from stage fright. We live in a dangerously fractured world. It’s hard for us to recognize the experiences we all share: life, death, love. Which means that it’s a good thing that my uncle’s play is back on Broadway, with its timely reminder that we all live together in our town.”
This production is being produced by Jeffrey Richards, Hunter Arnold, Patty Baker, Craig Balsam, Irene Gandy, Rebecca Gold, Louise Gund, Willette & Manny Klausner, M/B/P Productions, Daryl Roth and Jayne Baron Sherman.