Former Ragtime star, Alton Fitzgerald, will play his last performance as Sheridan Whiteside in Chapel Hill, North Carolina's PlayMakers Repertory Company production of Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner on Dec. 16. The staging began Nov. 21. Fitzgerald garnered attention as the most visible actor to follow Brian Stokes Mitchell into the role of jazz pianist-turned-revolutionary Coalhouse Walker, Jr., in the Broadway musical Ragtime. At PlayMakers, he plays the equally irascible, but otherwise quite different character of Sheridan Whiteside, the world-famous columnist and radio personality who is stranded in a Midwestern family's home after slipping and breaking his leg on their doorstep. In doing so, Fitzgerald will be that rare African-American to play Whiteside, a classic comedic role traditionally played by a white actor.
The Man Who Came to Dinner was recently given a high-profile Broadway revival at the Roundabout Theatre Company. Nathan Lane played Whiteside, a part originated by Monty Woolly.
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