MTC produced the not-for-profit staging at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway in the spring. The play about trauma-addled lovers and war correspondents — Linney plays a photojournalist and d'Arcy James a reporter — who uneasily settle into life on the homefront earned respectable reviews and a Tony nomination for Best Play. Linney was nominated as Best Actress in a Play.
Commercial producers picked up the play for a fall return, which began previews Sept. 23. Linney was busy filming her new Showtime series "The Big C" in the interim. For the second Broadway life of Time Stands Still, Alicia Silverstone has been succeeded by Christina Ricci (Hollywood's "The Addams Family"), who plays the young girlfriend of Bogosian's editor character.
Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan again directs, and his design team reunites.
Here's how the producers bill the show: "Sarah and James, a photographer and a journalist, have been together for years and share a passion for documenting the realities of war. But when circumstances compel them to return home to New York and their circle of friends (Eric Bogosian and Christina Ricci) the adventurous couple confronts the prospect of a more conventional life."
Pulitzer Prize winner Margulies (Dinner With Friends) told Playbill magazine in early 2009, when the play premiered at the Geffen Playhouse, "What I tried to do with this play is capture a sense of the way we live now, to dramatize the things that thinking, feeling, moral people are thinking about and struggle with — the issues of how to be a citizen of the world, how to show compassion, how to be involved, how to be true to yourself and your immediate loved ones." He added, "I'm just trying to deal with what's on a lot of people's minds at this stage of the history of the world. It's a play of ideas. Its setting is domestic, in a New York apartment, but it's really about things that the outside world brings into that apartment. It's about the information age as well — what do we do with what we learn about the world? The play asks a lot of these questions."
The backdrop is the world of journalism, he said, "and it deals with issues like moral responsibility, but just like my play Sight Unseen was thought to be about art and was really a love story…[Time Stands Still is about] the people we care about."
The new Broadway run of Time Stands Still is produced Manhattan Theatre Club Productions; Inc. (Lynne Meadow, artistic director; Barry Grove executive producer); Nelle Nugent; Bud Martin; Wendy Federman; Ted Snowdon; Max Cooper; Susanne Adamski; Mari Nakachi; Elisabeth Morton/Sharon A. Carr; in association with Jack M. Dalgleish and Joseph Sirola.
The creative team includes John Lee Beatty (scenic design), Rita Ryack (costume design), Peter Kaczorowski (lighting design), Darron L West (sound design), Peter Golub (original music) and Thomas Schall (fight direction).
The company also includes understudies Heidi Armbruster and Tony Carlin.
Tickets range from $56.50-$121.50 with premiere seating available from $176.50-$251.50 with standing room (when available) at $26.50. Tickets include a $1.50 facility fee. Tickets are on sale via Telecharge.com and at (212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250.
Visit www.TimeStandsStillonBroadway.com.
