Roundabout Theatre Company has added two new productions to its 2018-19 season lineup: Theresa Rebeck’s Bernhardt/Hamlet is set for a Broadway premiere, while Lydia R. Diamond’s Toni Stone will bow off-Broadway.
Janet McTeer will star as Sarah Bernhardt in Rebeck’s account of the legendary stage performer’s ambitious quest near the end of her celebrated career to conquer the role of Shakespeare’s gloomy Danish prince in a lavish production that played Paris and London in 1899. Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God) will direct the play, described as a rollicking mix of high comedy and human drama.
Uzo Aduba has signed on for the title role in the world premiere of Diamond’s new play about the passionate baseball fan with a great arm who in 1945 became the first woman to go pro in the Negro Leagues, enduring discriminatory treatment from her male teammates. Pam MacKinnon, a Tony winner for the 2012 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, will direct. The play is based on Martha Ackmann’s book, Curveball, The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone.
Bernhardt/Hamlet begins previews Sept. 1 at the American Airlines Theatre, with opening night set for Sept. 25 in a limited engagement scheduled to run through Nov. 18. Toni Stone will begin performances at the Laura Pels Theatre in May 2019, with exact dates to be announced, as well as additional cast on both productions. The two plays were commissioned by Roundabout.
British stage veteran McTeer won a Tony Award for lead actress for her 1997 Broadway debut in A Doll’s House. She was most recently on Broadway in 2016, starring opposite Liev Schreiber in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. She currently appears in two Netflix series: Ozark and Marvel’s Jessica Jones.
Aduba has won two Emmys for her role as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren on Orange Is the New Black. She made her Broadway debut in Coram Boy in 2007, returning in the 2011 revival of Godspell, and made her London stage debut in a 2016 West End revival of Jean Genet’s The Maids.
Rebeck’s previous Broadway plays are Mauritius, Seminar and Dead Accounts, while Diamond’s Stick Fly was produced on Broadway in 2011 and Smart People played off-Broadway in 2016.
Roundabout’s 2018-19 season also will include the previously announced Broadway revivals of Sam Shepard’s True West, with Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano; and the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, starring Kelli O’Hara. Off-Broadway, the company will present Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Apologia, with Stockard Channing, and Ming Peiffer’s Usual Girls.
