Fat Pig Headed to Broadway With Dane Cook and Josh Hamilton

By Andrew Gans
November 18, 2010

Comedian Dane Cook and stage and screen star Josh Hamilton will head the cast of the Broadway debut of Neil LaBute's Fat Pig, which is scheduled to open in spring 2011 at a theatre to be announced.

Heather Provost and Aldo Scrofani will produce the Broadway run, which will be directed by playwright LaBute. The two women's roles have yet to be cast.

Hamilton will play the role of a young man who begins a relationship with an overweight woman. His obnoxious friend will be played by Cook, who will be making his Broadway debut.

In a statement the playwright said, "Since the original production, the text of the play has been seasoned over the past five years by both my experience and the continuing struggle for acceptance of people in the world around me who fall outside of mainstream, classic definitions. I’ve been approached by people who’ve seen Fat Pig and need to talk to me about it more than any other play I’ve written and I recognize the universal nerve that gets pinched by this story. I’m also extremely eager to get into rehearsal with Dane and Josh. The ability to cater to your actors is a luxury that comes with being both writer and director. I’m planning on writing new material for this production to enhance the already considerable gifts that these men bring to the characters. I’m very much looking forward to this opportunity to see Fat Pig through fresh eyes."

	Josh Hamilton
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

MCC Theater presented Fat Pig at Off-Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2004. The Off-Broadway cast featured Jeremy Piven, Keri Russell, Andrew McCarthy and Ashlie Atkinson; Jo Bonney directed.

LaBute directed the show's London's incarnation.

Fat Pig, according to press notes, "tells the story of Tom (Hamilton), a very eligible bachelor who falls for the beautiful, bright and plus-sized Helen. Tom is overjoyed with his new relationship but his shallow co-workers are less enthusiastic. Tom shrugs off their objections but eventually the cruel jabs of his acerbic friend Carter (Cook) and Jeannie, a former flame, force him to question his own values and the importance of conventional good looks."

LaBute was represented on Broadway with the Tony-nominated Reasons to Be Pretty.

Famed comic Dane Cook has been seen on screen and "My Best Friends Girl," "Dan in Real Life," "Good Luck Chuck," "Mr. Brooks" and "Employee of the Month."

Josh Hamilton's New York theatre credits include A Lie of the Mind, Things We Want, The Coast of Utopia, Hurlyburly, Proof, This is our Youth, The Waverly Gallery, The Cider House Rules, As Bees in Honey Drown, Gone Home, The Violet Hour, Suburbia and Women and Wallace.