Real-life couple Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale will star alongside one another in a contemporary rewrite of Euripides’ Medea at the Brooklyn Academy of Music next year. The staging is from Australian writer-director Simon Stone, who returns Off-Broadway following his critically acclaimed adaptation of Yerma.
The limited run of Medea will play in the BAM Harvey Theatre in January 2020.
Emmy and Golden Globe nominee Byrne (Damages, Bridesmaids, Get Him to the Greek) will star in the title role, and two-time Emmy winner and Tony nominee Cannavale (The Lifespan of a Fact, Mauritius, The Motherfucker With the Hat) will play the role of Jason. In the well-known tragedy, Medea takes bloody revenge on her husband Jason after he leaves her for another woman and banishes her from their home.
Byrne and Cannavale have been seen together in the films Spy, Annie, and Adult Beginners. A full cast for Medea will be announced at a later time.
Stone's contemporary re-working of Medea was previously seen at International Theater Amsterdam (ITA, formerly Toneelgroep Amsterdam) in 2014, and at London's Barbican earlier this year featuring a different cast. In the modern-day version, Anna, once a successful doctor, returns from a stint in a psychiatric hospital. Willing to forgive her husband’s affair with a younger woman, she wants a fresh start with him and their children. But he has different plans. Sidelined and in danger of losing everything, she is driven into a corner and sees only one way out.
In addition to Yerma, Stone has reworked Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck and Aeschylus' The Oresteia. At the upcoming 2019 Salzburg Festival, he will direct Cherubini’s opera Médée.
Medea will be produced Off-Broadway by ITA, BAM, and David Lan (The Jungle, The Inheritance), who will serve as BAM’s Theater Associate.
