Following two-and-a-half weeks of vocal rest, Craig Bierko will once again take the stage on the Plymouth Theatre on Nov. 13 as the star of Broadway's Thou Shalt Not. Bierko ruptured one of his vocal cords on opening night, Oct. 25, when he was accidentally hit in the larynx during a fight scene. He exited the show the next day.
"He finished the show and went to the opening night party," spokesman Philip Rinaldi said at the time, "but the next day he was hemorrhaging and had to be brought to the hospital. It was just a freak thing that happened." Understudy David New, a veteran of shows at Chicago's Goodman, Steppenwolf and Victory Gardens theatres, has been in the show since then. The staging of the fight scene has not been altered.
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The new Susan Stroman-Harry Connick, Jr., musical Thou Shalt Not opened Oct. 25 for a limited run through Jan. 6, 2002 at Broadway's Plymouth Theatre. After delaying its first preview a week following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the new Lincoln Center Theater musical Thou Shalt Not started performances Sept. 27 (the original start date was Sept. 20.)
This musical adaptation of Emile Zola's gritty tale of murderous adultery stars Kate Levering in the role of Therese Raquin (the name of the original novel), Craig Bierko her lover Laurent and Norbert Butz her husband Camille. Debra Monk and Leo Burmester are also in the cast. Levering and Bierko co-starred as distinctly sunnier characters in the Stroman-directed The Music Man, which had Levering as Zaneeta Shinn, and Bierko as Prof. Harold Hill. Levering then went on to become the budding starlet Peggy Sawyer in the Broadway revival of 42nd Street, winning a Tony nomination for her tireless tapping.
Butz was recently seen Off-Broadway as Amy Ryan's baby-stoning boyfriend in Edward Bond's Saved. More recently, he was in Jason Robert Brown's new musical, The Last Five Years at the North Light Theatre in Chicago (and soon due at LCT). He is also known for a stint as the emcee in Cabaret.
The book is written by Tommy Thompson. Stroman directs and choreographs.
—By Robert Simonson
