Reading Of Jon Marans’ THE COVER UP To Take Place At The Barrow Group On November 3

The Cover Up, a new play by Jon Marans, will receive an invitational reading at The Barrow Group Theatre on Monday, November 3, at 2:15 p.m. (note updated time). The reading will be directed by Nina Goodheart, whose Off-Broadway credits include Road Kills, cityscrape, and cunnicularii. Goodheart is the co-founder of the theater company Good Apples Collective, recently recognized as part of the “next great leap in theater.”

Set in Staunton, Virginia in 1973, The Cover Up unfolds as the Watergate hearings dominate television screens across America. Portland Lipper, a mother concealing her daughter’s mental illness, is determined to help her brilliant but schizophrenic daughter, Floye Marie, graduate from the University of Virginia. As Floye struggles to pass her final course on Machiavelli, Portland turns to her volatile ex-husband, Ronner, for help. Floye, who hears voices and imagines herself as the first Republican female president, has also “conjured” Richard Nixon for guidance amid her turmoil.

Cast and Creative Team

The reading will feature:

• Jeremy Shamos (Clybourne Park, Here We Are, The Gilded Age, Only Murders in the Building) as Richard Nixon

• Geneva Carr (Hand to God, CBS’s Bull)

• Steve Rosen (Spamalot, Peter and the Starcatcher, The Other Josh Cohen, Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors)

• Rachel Ravel (Fiddler on the Roof in Los Angeles, creator/star of Rachel Unraveled)

• Rebecca Salzhauer (In Absentia at St. Lydia’s, Deceived at Bay Street Theater*)

• D.B. Milliken (Road Kills, cunnicularii, film Maldoro)

About the Playwright

Jon Marans is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Old Wicked Songs, produced across the U.S. and internationally, including the West End production starring Bob Hoskins. His Off-Broadway work The Temperamentals was nominated for Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play. Marans also wrote the revised book for Lerner and Loewe’s Paint Your Wagon (Fifth Avenue Theatre, Ordway, The MUNY) and other plays including A Strange and Separate People, Jumping for Joy, and A Raw Space, as well as the musicals Legacy and The Irrationals.

Marans penned the 92nd Street Y’s Lyrics and Lyricists program honoring Yip Harburg and served as story editor for Michael Douglas’ Stonebridge Productions. A graduate of Duke University with a degree in mathematics and a minor in music, Marans received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. His directing credits include Old Wicked Songs (most recently at GableStage, nominated for a 2024 Carbonell Award for Best Direction), The Gin Game, Barrymore (Bristol Riverside Theatre), and Art (Mile Square Theatre).

More information: jonmarans.net