Waterston Will Join Cast of Travesties at the Long Wharf Theatre

By: May. 04, 2005
Enter Your Email to Unlock This Article

Plus, get the best of BroadwayWorld delivered to your inbox, and unlimited access to our editorial content across the globe.




Existing user? Just click login.

Sam Waterston will join an already stellar ensemble in the Long Wharf Theatre's production of Tom Stoppard's Travesties.

Waterston will play alongside Tom Hewitt, Don Stephenson and Isabel Keating in the Connecticut theatre's staging of the brainy comedy. Travesties, which is directed by Gregory Boyd, will play its first preview on May 4th at the company's C. Newton Schenck Mainstage before opening on May 11th; it will run through June 5th.

Travesties, set in Zurich, Switzerland in 1974 and 1917, is a broadly comic and intellectually engaging look at the intertwining lives of British consul official Henry Wilfred Carr and several famous artists. Carr, who narrates, recalls his participation in an amateur production of The Importance of Being Earnest during which he comes into contact with James Joyce, the Dadaist writer Tristan Tzara and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (better known as Lenin).

Waterston will play Carr, while Hewitt is Tzara and Stephenson is Joyce. Keating portrays Nadya, and Lenin is played by Gregor Paslawsky. Featured in the cast are Graeme Malcolm as Bennett, Maggie Lacey as Cecily and Cheryl Lynn Bowers as Gwendolyn. The production's design team includes Neil Patel (sets), Judith Dolan (costumes), Rui Rita (lighting) and John Gromada (sound), while Marlo Hunter choreographs.

Waterston, acclaimed both on stage and screen, received a 1994 Best Actor in a Play nomination for his performance in Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Other Broadway credits include A Walk in the Woods, Benefactors, Lunch Hour, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, Hay Fever Indians, Halfway Up the Tree and Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad. A familiar face to TV viewers for his longtime role on Law and Order, Waterston has also been featured in such films as Crimes and Misdemeanors, Hannah and Her Sisters and Serial Mom.

Hewitt, who played Dr. Frank N' Furter in the 2000 revival of The Rocky Horror Show, has also appeared on Broadway in The School for Scandal, Art, The Boys from Syracuse and Dracula. Stephenson was a replacement Leo Bloom in The Producers; other Broadway credits include Dracula, Private Lives, By Jeeves, Parade and Titanic. Keating, a 2004 Tony Award nominee for her Judy Garland in The Boy from Oz, also appeared as a replacement in 2003's Enchanted April.

Tom Stoppard, considered to be one of the greatest living playwrights, has written such works as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, The Real Inspector Hound, Jumpers, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, India Ink and The Invention of Love. His trilogy, The Coast of Utopia (composed of Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage) will play at Lincoln Center in the fall of 2006 after having debuted at the Royal National Theatre.

The original 1975 production of Travesties, directed by Peter Wood, received the 1976 Best Play Tony Award.

The Long Wharf Theatre is located at 222 Sargent Drive in New Haven, CT. Tickets are available by calling (203) 787-4282 or (800) 782-8497. For more information on Travesties and the Long Wharf Theatre, visit www.longwharf.org.

 






Videos