‘Homeland’ Star Mandy Patinkin to Navigate the Apocalypse Off Broadway

NEW YORK — Thoughts of the apocalypse are all over movie screens this summer, and now the theater is also bracing for the end of the world.

Homeland star Mandy Patinkin will freshen up his song-and-dance skills in The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville. Co-created with and co-starring downtown performance artist and playwright Taylor Mac, the show will be presented by Classic Stage Company in a production by Tony-winning director-choreographer Susan Stroman (The Producers).

The musical chronicle of the rise, fall and hopeful rise again of humankind as told by two survivors of an epic flood features songs from Rodgers & Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim, from Queen to R.E.M. It will premiere in December at Abrons Arts Center at the Henry Street Settlement.

As previously reported, Elizabeth Olsen will open the Classic Stage Company season in Romeo and Juliet. Playing Romeo is Finn Wittrock, who made a head-turning Broadway debut in 2012 opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman and Andrew Garfield in Death of a Salesman.

Directed by Tea Alagic, that production runs on CSC’s mainstage in September.

The 2013-14 CSC season also will include a new production of Bertolt Brecht‘s A Man’s Man, featuring original music by Duncan Sheik, who collaborated on the company’s current production of Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle; and a new adaptation by David Ives of Jean-Francois Regnard‘s The Heir Apparent.

Ives’ play Venus in Fur was a major hit at CSC, and moved to Broadway and won a lead actress Tony Award in 2012 for Nina Arianda. The playwright teamed with director Roman Polanski on the screenplay for a French-language feature based on the work, which premiered in competition at Cannes last month to warm response. The film was picked up for U.S. distribution by Sundance Selects.