Kaefer stepped into the role at the last minute for the evening performance on March 10, as Danson had to go out of town for a family emergency. Kaefer will now play the role indefinitely, until Danson comes back. No performances were canceled. The play began previews March 6 and ends April 14.
Kaefer previously appeared in the Keen Company's production of Three-Cornered Moon. Regionally she has appeared in Juno and the Paycock, The Misanthrope and The Threepenny Opera at the American Conservatory Theatre. As a singer, she has performed in the Off-Broadway show Our Sinatra; in concerts at Feinstein's at the Regency and Birdland; and in her own solo show, Kiss Me Once: Stories from the Home Front.
Jonathan Silverstein directs Tea and Sympathy, which also stars Heidi Armbruster (Sea of Tranquility at Atlantic Theater Company), Dan McCabe (Pen at Playwright's Horizons), Dan Cordle (Keen Company's Pullman Car Hiawatha), Brandon Espinoza (Gypsy), Ben Hollandsworth, Jake Levy, Craig Mathers, Cal Robertson and Mark Setlock (Rent).
The play, a critique of McCarthyism, is about a 17-year-old boy in a New England boarding school who is presumed to be gay by his peers and teachers, and is ridiculed by them but befriended by a teacher's wife.
Tea and Sympathy originally opened on Broadway on Sept. 30, 1953, and ran for 712 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Longacre Theatre and 48th Street Theatre before closing on June 18, 1955. Elia Kazan directed the production, which starred Deborah Kerr, Leif Erickson and John Kerr. The trio also starred in Vincente Minnelli's 1956 film version, which was adapted by Anderson. Anderson's other plays include All Summer Long, Silent Night, Lonely Night, The Days Between, You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running, I Never Sang For My Father, Solitaire and Double Solitaire. He received Oscar nominations for the screenplays "I Never Sang for My Father" and "The Nun's Story."
Silverstein's credits include Michael Albanese's Red Herring at the New York International Fringe Festival, the Keen Company's The Hasty Heart, The Triumph of Love at the Cleveland Play House and The Rats Are Getting Bigger at the New York International Fringe Festival and The Public Theater's New Works Now! festival.
Theatre Row is located at 410 West 42nd Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues. Tickets are $40 and are available through Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or at www.ticketcentral.com.
