Fresh from wrapping her Emmy-nominated run in the sixth and final season of FX’s The Americans, Keri Russell will make her Broadway debut this season, starring in the upcoming revival of Pulitzer Prize winner Lanford Wilson’s drama, Burn This.
Russell joins the production’s previously announced lead Adam Driver, with whom she also appears in J.J. Abrams’ conclusion of the new Star Wars trilogy, which is currently filming.
Michael Mayer, a 2007 Tony winner for Spring Awakening who also is represented on Broadway this season by the Go-Go’s musical Head Over Heels, will direct the play, beginning performances in March at a theater to be announced.
The acclaimed original production of Burn This premiered off-Broadway in 1987 starring John Malkovich and Joan Allen in the roles to be played by Driver and Russell. Additional casting and design team will be announced shortly.
Set in the gritty 1980s, the play revolves around four spiritually and emotionally isolated downtown New Yorkers whose lives are uprooted by the accidental death of a young dancer. Driver will play Pale, a volatile, coke-snorting restaurant manager who begins a tempestuous relationship with sensitive dancer-choreographer Anna, the part to be played by Russell.
In addition to Star Wars: Episode IX, Russell has an upcoming screen role in Scott Cooper’s supernatural thriller Antlers, produced by Guillermo del Toro. She made her off-Broadway stage debut in 2004 in Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig.
David Binder, who last teamed with Mayer on the Tony-winning revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, will produce Burn This, with 101 Productions serving as general manager.
