The Broadway revival will be directed by Anthony Page. Also in the ensemble, as previously reported by Playbill On-Line, is David Harbour as Nick. The role of Honey is yet to be cast. The show will have a pre-Broadway engagement in Boston in January 2005. No Broadway theatre or dates have been named.
Jonathan Pryce, once reported as heading the cast as George, is no longer involved with the venture.
Elizabeth McCann, who has spent a good deal of her late career producing Edward Albee, will again back the playwright, along with Daryl Roth. Her past Albee ventures include The Play About the Baby, Beckett/Albee and The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?. The latter won the Tony Award for Best Play. The play also marked the first time McCann, Albee and Irwin worked together; Irwin replaced Bill Pullman in the leading role and received good notices for his work.
Irwin is also a writer. The 2003-04 season of the Signature Theatre Company was dedicated to Irwin's works.
Kathleen Turner, who will play the ferocious, man-eating, drink-guzzling Martha, a character created by Uta Hagen, last appeared on Broadway as another booze-fueled, sexually-voracious character: Mrs. Robinson in the critically lambasted but immensely popular stage version of The Graduate. Prior to that, she graced Broadway in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Indiscretions. David Harbour recently completed a run in Between Us at Manhattan Theatre Club. Harbour has been ubiquitous of late, jumping form one stage to the next. He played Moses John Jackson, the athletic, manly object of young A.E. Housman's affections in Broadway's The Invention of Love in 2001. He then gave a standout performance as a slick operator in the Signature Theatre Company's hit 2003 revival of Lanford Wilson's The Fifth of July. From there, he went on to the Lincoln Center premiere of Jules Fieffer's A Bad Friend and the Public Theater's presentation of Two Noble Kinsmen.
Page is an experienced Albee hand. He has directed London productions of Woolf, A Delicate Balance and The Goat.
The production will be the first Broadway revival of the landmark drama since 1976. That mounting, directed by the playwright, ran 117 performances.
