After absences of 21 and 27 years, respectively, distinguished veterans Jane Alexander and James Cromwell will return to Broadway this season to play a long-married couple contemplating separation in Bess Wohl’s new play, Grand Horizons.
They join a previously announced cast that includes Priscilla Lopez, Maulik Pancholy, Ashley Park and Michael Urie in director Leigh Silverman’s production for Second Stage Theater. The strictly limited engagement begins previews Dec. 23 at the Hayes Theatre ahead of a Jan. 23 official opening.
Described in press materials as “by turns funny, shocking and painfully honest,” the play is an intimate look at the complex nature of love. It marks the Broadway debut for Wohl, whose Small Mouth Sounds was a major critical hit off-Broadway in 2015 and has since been widely produced.
In Grand Horizons, Alexander and Cromwell will play Nancy and Bill, who have enjoyed 50 full years together as husband and wife. But as they prepare to move into the retirement community that gives the play its title, Nancy suddenly decides she wants out of the marriage. The upheaval leaves their two adult sons struggling to understand, questioning lifelong assumptions about the people they thought they knew best.
The play was co-commissioned by Second Stage and the Williamstown Theatre Festival, where it premiered this summer with a different cast. Thomas Sadoski was originally announced as part of the Broadway ensemble but has since dropped out due to scheduling conflicts; his replacement is to be announced.
Four-time Oscar nominee Alexander was last on Broadway in Joanna Murray-Smith’s drama Honour in 1998. She won a Tony Award for best featured actress in a play in 1969 for The Great White Hope and a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre in 1995.
Cromwell was nominated for an Oscar in 1996 for Babe and won a 2013 Emmy for American Horror Story. His last Broadway appearance was as Polonius in a 1992 production of Hamlet. More recently, Cromwell has appeared on HBO’s Succession and in the Steven Soderbergh Netflix film The Laundromat.
