The original Irish cast of the Druid Theatre Company production of Martin McDonagh's The Lonesome West will appear in the Broadway incarnation of the play. Along with the previously reported Brian F. O'Byrne -- a veteran of Broadway's The Beauty Queen of Leenane, also by McDonagh -- the cast will include Dawn Bradfield, David Ganly and Maeliosa Stafford.
Lonesome West is part of a trio of McDonagh plays that also includes A Skull in Connemara and Beauty Queen, and is, indeed, set in the same Irish town where Beauty Queen's mother and daughter wounded each other. In Lonesome West, it's two brothers, played by O'Byrne and Stafford, who do the fighting, over everything "from snack foods to hairstyles." Ganly plays a local priest and Girleen a young lovestruck teenager who try to bring some peace to the situation.
Tony-winner Garry Hynes, who piloted Beauty Queen, will direct. The show will officially open on April 27.
West will begin performances at the Lyceum only days after that theatre's current resident, National Actors Theatre's Night Must Fall starring Matthew Broderick, closes on April 11. Night Must Fall will reopen at the Helen Hayes Theatre two days later, with Broderick staying on for an extended run.
* Two of the prolific McDonagh's plays have thus far made the trip across the Atlantic. The Beauty Queen of Leenane debuted at the Atlantic Theatre Company in early 1998 and quickly transferred to Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre. Nominated for a best play Tony (Art won), the show did capture several acting Tonys and a win for Irish director Garry Hynes, who will also stage Lonesome West. She had already staged West in London back in 1997 with her Druid Theatre Company. Wreghitt told the New York Times he hoped to bring several cast-members from that production to America, pending Actors' Equity approval.
The designers for West are Francis O'Connor (sets-costumes) and Tharon Musser (lighting).
McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan opened with less success in the spring of 1998 at the Public Theater. That play, like Leenane, is starting to receive numerous regional productions.
For tickets and information call (212) 239-6200. The Lyceum box office will open April 5.
