Theater Previews is bringing together an award-winning creative team and cast for the play, to run at Reynolds Theater on the Duke campus.

Theater Previews is co-producing The Great Game with Tony Award-winning producer Randall Wreghitt. Theater Previews previously partnered with Wreghitt on Little Women – The Musical and Paper Doll.

Wreghitt is a producer of the current Broadway musical Grey Gardens.

Tony Award nominee Wilson Milam (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) will direct The Great Game, billed as an 1870-set "epic story of love, betrayal and intrigue played out in the drawing rooms of London and the snow-capped peaks of Central Asia."

The cast will feature Michael O'Hagan, Lois Markle, Anjali Bhimani, David Bishins, Christopher Burns, Marcus Dean Fuller, Robert Steggert and Yvonne Woods. Playwright D. Tucker Smith is also the author of The Knockout Suit, a finalist in the Samuel French Short Play Competition, and Overnight Delivery and Patriot Act, both finalists in the New York City 15-Minute Play Festival.

The playwright will be active in both the production process and in related academic activities on campus.

Tony Award nominee (The Pajama Game) Derek McLane will design the sets for The Great Game. Greg Gale will design costumes.

"We couldn’t be more delighted with the cast," Zannie Giraud Voss, producing director at Duke, stated. "These artists will bring a wealth of talent to the Duke community and Triangle audiences, and our Duke student interns will get to work with these outstanding artists on the creation of another exciting new work for the American theatre."

"The Great Game is a play whose universal themes of imperialism, racism, greed and forbidden love resonate now more than ever," stated Voss. "The play is a rare and compelling work of art."

Theater Previews at Duke's mission is to serve as a breeding ground for professional, innovative and high quality new plays and musicals, and to offer audiences the opportunity to engage in productions in a variety of stages of development.

The presence of the playwright is an essential part of the program.

Theater Previews provides the personnel, space, time and support required to bring his or her vision to fruition in the course of producing work that makes a contribution to the field on a national scale.

Tickets ($18-$30) are on sale for the production at the University box office at (919) 684-4444, or online at www.tickets.duke.edu.