Tony Award winners Blair Brown, L. Scott Caldwell and John Glover star in Athol Fugard's new drama, Sorrows and Rejoicing, which will begin previews on May 1 at Princeton, New Jersey's McCarter Theatre. Fugard also directs. The play will open on May 4 and run through May 20.
After the Princeton run, Sorrows will travel to Cape Town, South Africa, said a spokesman for the McCarter. Fugard will still direct, but a different cast will be featured. The play will then traverse the Atlantic once more for its New York City premiere at Second Stage. The Second Stage mounting will be a separate venture from the McCarter presentation, and it is not clear whether any of the current cast members will be used.
Fugard is the South African author of such noted plays as Master Harold...and the Boys, Mecca, Valley Song and Blood Knot. The new work takes place in the Karoo region, a semi-desert area of southern Africa. There two women, one white and one black, find that they love the same exiled poet.
Brown won a Tony Award last year for her performance in Copenhagen. The Michael Frayn play concluded a streak of Broadway credits by Brown, including Cabaret and James Joyce's The Dead. Glover, who plays the poet, won his Tony for Terrence McNally's Love! Valor! Compassion!, in which he essayed a dual role. Most recently, he headlined Brian Friel's Give Me Your Answer, Do! Off Broadway. Caldwell won a 1988 Tony Award for her work in August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
Also in the cast is Marcy Harriell. Presently on the McCarter's mainstage is Arthur Kopit's reworking of 1999's Y2K: BecauseHeCan. Emily Mann directs. The five person cast features David Birney, Gene Farber, Jordan Lage, Lionel Mark Smith and Barbara Sukowa.
McCarter Theatre is located at 91 University Place in Princeton, New Jersey. For tickets or information, call (609) 258-2787 or visit http://www.mccarter.org www.mccarter.org.
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The recently announced 2001-02 McCarter season includes:
• Romeo and Juliet directed by Emily Mann, Sept. 11-30
• Vienna Notes by Richard Nelson, directed by Daniel Fish, Oct. 16 Nov. 4
• A Christmas Carol, Dec. 6-30
• All Over by Edward Albee, directed by Emily Mann, Feb. 12-March 3, 2002
• Don Juan by Moliere, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, March 26 April 14, 2002
• A fifth play to be announced, April 30-May 19. Possibilities include Frank McGuinness' Dolly West's Kitchen and a new play by Eric Bogosian
—By Robert Simonson
