Gets Will Join Stenborg in Off-Broadway's Vigil

By Andrew Gans
and Adam Hetrick
10 Aug 2009

Malcolm Gets
Malcolm Gets

Malcolm Gets, most recently on the New York stage in the short-lived Broadway musical The Story of My Life, will join the previously announced Helen Stenborg in the new Off-Broadway comedy Vigil.

Morris Panych's comedy, according to The New York Times, will begin previews at the DR2 Theatre Sept. 20 with an official opening Sept. 29. The limited engagement will play through Nov. 22.

Vigil was previously staged at the Westport Country Playhouse in February 2008. Stenborg (Waiting in the Wings, The Crucible) is reprising her performance Off-Broadway.

Stephen DiMenna, who helmed the Westport engagement, will direct Off-Broadway. The play, according to a recent casting notice, "offers belly laughs and pathos as it explores subjects of loneliness and mortality. Kemp, a 'down on life' neurotic, receives a letter asking him to come to the side of his long-lost, dying aunt, Grace. He goes not only to help out as asked, but to help her along, since her impending death is not happening quickly enough for him… As he unburdens himself to his only (barely) living relative, unraveling the dysfunctions of his childhood and family, they develop an oddly loving and symbiotic bond. The lack of Grace's loquaciousness is revealed in an ironic ending."

Helen Stenborg was Tony-nominated for her work in Waiting in the Wings; her most recent Broadway appearance was the 2002 revival of The Crucible. Stenborg received a 2000 Drama Desk Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Malcolm Gets has appeared in New York in The Story of My Life, Amour (Tony and Drama Desk nominations), The Moliere Comedies, A New Brain, Merrily We Roll Along (Drama Desk nomination and Obie Award), The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Obie Award), Hello Again, Boys and Girls, Polish Joke, Finian's Rainbow, Juno and for Encores!, both The Boys From Syracuse and The Apple Tree. His films include "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing," "Love in the Time of Money," "Adam and Steve," "Sex and the City" and the new HBO film of "Grey Gardens," in which he stars opposite Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. He is heard on two recent releases on the PS Classics label: the cast recording of The Story of My Life and the solo album "The Journey Home," on which Melissa Errico guests for one track.