Tony winner Kenny Leon will direct a brand new Broadway manufacturing of Thornton Wilder’s Our City within the fall of 2024, the primary revival of the basic play because the 2002 manufacturing that starred Paul Newman because the stage supervisor.
The manufacturing dates, forged, and venue can be introduced at a later date.
Leon’s many Broadway directing credit embrace Ohio State Murders, Topdog/Underdog, A Soldier’s Play, American Son and the present Purlie Victorious: A Non-Accomplice Romp By the Cotton Patch starring Leslie Odom Jr. at The Music Field Theatre. He gained the 2014 Tony for Finest Path for A Raisin within the Solar starring Denzel Washington, Sophie Okonedo, LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Anika Noni Rose.
“Thornton Wilder’s Our City in my thoughts stands on the high of the Mount Rushmore of nice American Theatre,” stated Leon in an announcement. “I really feel blessed and lucky to have gained the belief of The Wilder property to current this basic to a different era of theatre lovers. It’s lengthy been a burning need to collaborate on a Broadway manufacturing of such magnitude that speaks so fantastically and intimately to all folks about our shared time on the planet.”
Tappan Wilder, the playwright’s nephew and literary executor talking for the Wilder household, stated, “The Wilders are thrilled past measure that the distinguished director Kenny Leon has agreed to direct Our City on Broadway. The celebs are really aligned for Grover’s Nook’s the play about in all places.”
The design workforce for the revival will embrace scenic design by Beowulf Boritt (New York, New York), costume design by Dede Ayite (Jaja’s African Hair Braiding; Topdog/Underdog), lighting design by Allen Lee Hughes (Topdog/Underdog; A Soldier’s Play), sound design by Justin Ellington (Ohio State Murders; for coloured women…) and the dialect coach can be Kate Wilson (The Shark is Damaged, The Register Sidney Brustein’s Window).
Our City, set within the legendary village of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, initially opened on Broadway in 1938 and gained the Pulitzer Prize. The play explores the connection between two younger Grover’s Corners neighbors, George Gibbs and Emily Webb, whose childhood friendship blossoms into romance, after which culminates in marriage. When Emily loses her life in childbirth, the circle of life – rising up, maturity, and dying – is portrayed in every of the three acts.
Subsequent Broadway productions of the play have been staged in 1944, 1969, 1988 and, within the revival starring Newman and directed by James Naughton, 2002.
