Golden Globe Award nominee Mulligan ("An Education") is joined by Academy Award nominee Chris Sarandon, Jason Butler Harner and Ben Rosenfield in the 90-minute drama of familial unhappiness and existential wondering produced by Atlantic Theater Company and directed by Tony Award nominee David Leveaux (whose Arcadia is currently on Broadway).
The run continues through July 3 Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th Street, while Atlantic's main stage Linda Gross Theater undergoes renovation.
Here is a look at the opening night:
In the drama, according to ATC, "Karin (Mulligan) is the central figure in the lives of her family, not least because her own tenuous grip on reality keeps everyone in constant motion around her. On an annual vacation to a beautiful remote island, tensions flare as her husband (Harner), father (Sarandon) and brother (Rosenfield) struggle over the best way to help her. When a legacy of denial and repression boils over, threatening the future of the entire family, Karin decides that she must take command of her own destiny."
The film "Through a Glass Darkly," the action of which takes place in a 24-hour period, won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film. The title of the work is drawn from Chapter 13 of the Bible's New Testament, the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
Sarandon makes his Atlantic Theater Company debut and returns to the Off-Broadway stage for the first time in over 25 years. He most recently appeared on Broadway in the revival of Cyrano de Bergerac and the musical The Light in the Piazza. He is best known for his critically acclaimed Oscar-nominated performance as Leon in the film "Dog Day Afternoon."
Harner most recently appeared on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning production of The Coast of Utopia and opposite Angelina Jolie in the feature film "The Changeling." He received a Drama Desk Award nomination for his performance in the Jon Robin Baitz play The Paris Letter and an Obie Award for his work in the Off-Broadway revival of Hedda Gabler.
Rosenfield makes his professional Off-Broadway debut.
Mulligan returns to the New York stage following her Broadway debut as Nina in the 2008 revival of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, for which she received a Drama Desk Award nomination. Read Playbill magazine's new feature in which Mulligan says Darkly's Karin is akin to Chekhov's Nina, though Karin is more severely disturbed.
Muligan received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations and a BAFTA Award for her critically acclaimed breakthrough role in the film "An Education."
"When I'm playing Karin," she told Playbill magazine, "I'm not focusing on her illness but on what she wants and how it comes out in her makeup. She wants to be loved, she wants her family to be happy, she wants people to be kind to each other. It's a play about someone struggling with the fact the world isn't always kind and people aren't always good."
The stage adaptation of Through a Glass Darkly made its world premiere at the Almeida Theatre in London on June 16, 2010.
For more information, visit www.atlantictheater.org or call Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200.
