Acclaimed Our Town Has a New "Stage Manager"

By Kenneth Jones
August 25, 2009

Jason Butler Harner, no stranger to Off-Broadway, succeeds David Cromer in the role of the Stage Manager in the lauded revival of Thornton Wilder's Our Town at the Barrow Street Theatre Aug. 25.

Harner played Ivan Turgenev in the Tony Award-winning Tom Stoppard play The Coast of Utopia on Broadway, and has also been seen in Hedda Gabler (New York Theatre Workshop), The Gingerbread House (the stageFarm), The Paris Letter (Roundabout Theatre Company), The Invention of Love (ACT), The Cherry Orchard (Mark Taper Forum), The Glass Menagerie (The Kennedy Center) and Crimes of the Heart (Second Stage Theatre). His screen credits include "Changeling," "The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3" and "John Adams."

Cromer, who also directed Off-Broadway's Our Town, left the play on Aug. 16 to direct the fall Broadway revivals of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound. (During the interim period, Cromer's understudy, Jay Russell, played the Stage Manager.)

The complete cast includes Jeremy Beiler as Simon Stimson, Rob Beitzel as Howie Newsome, Susan Bennett as Mrs. Soames, Kati Brazda as Mrs. Webb, Nathan Dame as Sam Craig George Demas as Constable Warren, Jennifer Grace as Emily, Wilbur Edwin Henry as Professor Willard, Adam Hinkle as Joe Crowell, Ronete Levenson as Rebecca Gibbs, James McMenamin as George, Ken Marks as Editor Webb, Seamus Mulcahy as Wally Webb, Lori Myers as Mrs. Gibbs, Jay Russell as Joe Stoddard, Armand Schultz as Doc Gibbs and Jason Yachanin as Si Crowell.

Our Town is produced by Scott Morfee, Jean Doumanian, Tom Wirtshafter, Ted Snowdon, Eagle Productions, Dena Hammerstein/Pam Pariseau, The Weinstein Company, and Burnt Umber Productions.

Barrow Street Theatre is located at 27 Barrow Street at Seventh Avenue South in the heart of Greenwich Village. For tickets call (212) 868-4444 or visit www.smarttix.com.