Roundabout stages a revival of 'Talley's Folly,' Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer-winning play
The original, and the new director, Michael Wilson. Playbill/BroadwayWorld
1:03 pm Sep. 5, 2012
Talley’s Folly, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Lanford Wilson, will be revived to close out the Roundabout Theater Company’s 2012-13 season, the theater announced on Wednesday.
Michael Wilson, who recently undertook the Broadway revival Gore Vidal’s ‘The Best Man,’ will direct the production, to be staged The Laura Pels Theater, one of Roundabout’s off-Broadway spaces. Last January he directed a revival of Tennesse Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore about which our own Mark Sullivan wrote: "Wilson has worked a miracle, transforming a play that has always been dismissed as a flop."
Opening night for Talley's Folly is scheduled for March 5, 2013, and previews will begin on Feb. 8.
The play, a one-act set during World World II that follows the lives of a hapless Jewish immigrant and his long-lost sweetheart inside a rundown Missouri boathouse, first debuted on Broadway on Feb. 20, 1980. That production starred Judd Hirsch and Tricia Hawkins, ran for 286 performances and received five Tony Award nominations. No casting for the current production has been announced.
Roundabout’s 2012-13 season kicks off on September 20 with the American stage debut of Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, directed by Michael Longhurst and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Other selections include Cyrano de Bergerac, Bad Jews, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin.
Here is the full text of the announcement:
September 5, 2012
Contact: Adrian Bryan-Brown, Matt Polk, Jessica Johnson, Amy Kass
Announces
A new Off-Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize winning play
TALLEY’S FOLLY
Will complete the 2012-2013 theatrical season
By Lanford Wilson
Directed by Michael Wilson
Performances begin February 8, 2013, Opening March 5, 2013
At the Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) is pleased to announce a new production of Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Talley’s Folly, directed by Michael Wilson, will complete the 2012-2013 theatrical season.
The limited engagement will begin performances on February 8, 2013 and open on March 5, 2013 at the Laura Pels Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street).
Talley’s Folly is funny and heart-warming play about finding love when you’ve nearly given up looking. At the end of World War II, Matt Friedman, a Jewish immigrant who has spent his life keeping others at a distance, returns to the small town where he first met Sally Talley. Nothing like her conservative Protestant family and neighbors, Sally is a nurse with deep misgivings about the country’s future. After a lifetime of believing they’ll never truly belong in the world around them, Matt has worked up the courage to ask Sally for her hand, and convince her that they do belong -- together.
This production completes Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2012-2013 season.
QUOTE FROM TODD HAIMES: “I’m thrilled with how our 2012-13 season has come together. As the final piece to be announced, Talley’s Folly is a perfect fit. This intimate revival from one of our great American playwrights, Lanford Wilson, provides just the right counterpoint to the sprawling period romance of Cyrano, the ensembles of Inge’s Picnic or Odets’ The Big Knife and the unique musical style of Rupert Holmes’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Joining Talley’s Off-Broadway this season, we have new plays from the exciting young British writer Nick Payne and from homegrown playwright Steven Levenson, who was first produced through our Roundabout Underground program. It is very exciting to put together a season with such variety, that features talent both familiar and new, and consistently offers the audience the kind of enduring themes and stories that have come to define Roundabout.”
In the LAURA PELS THEATRE this season, Talley’s Folly joins Nick Payne’s If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet which is currently in previews, directed by Michael Longhurst and featuring Annie Funke, Michelle Gomez, Jake Gyllenhaal, Brían F. O’Byrne. In the late spring following the limited run of Talley’s Folly, Steven Levenson’s The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, directed by Scott Ellis, will begin performances.
At STUDIO 54, Rupert Holmes’ musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood will begin performances on October 19th, starring Stephanie J. Block, Will Chase, Gregg Edelman, Jim Norton & Chita Rivera, directed by Scott Ellis.
At the AMERICAN AIRLINES THEATRE beginning September 14th, Cyrano de Bergerac will begin performances on Broadway. Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand, features a translation by Ranjit Bolt and stars Douglas Hodge,Clémence Poésy & Patrick Page, directed by Jamie Lloyd. Following that, Sam Gold’s production of William Inge’s Picnic will begin performances in January and then Doug Hughes’ production of Clifford Odets’ The Big Knife starring Bobby Cannavale will begin in the spring.
The sixth season of ROUNDABOUT UNDERGROUND also launches this fall with Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews directed by Daniel Aukin in a world premiere production.
Roundabout Theatre Company’s Tony® Award winning Anything Goes will set sail on a National Tourat Cleveland’s Playhouse Square in October 2012. Following its opening in Cleveland, Anything Goes will cruise into more than 25 other cities during the 2012/2013 season.
TICKET INFORMATION:
Only Roundabout subscribers have first access to tickets! To join Roundabout visit HYPERLINK "http://www.roundabouttheatre.org" www.roundabouttheatre.org or call Roundabout Audience Services at (212)719-1300. Tickets for all fall productions are also available at the American Airlines, Studio 54 and Laura Pels box offices. Single tickets for Talley’s Folly will be available this winter.
BIOGRAPHIES FOR TALLEY’S FOLLY:
LANFORD WILSON (Playwright) was the author of Balm In Gilead, The Rimers Of Eldritch, The Gingham Dog, Lemon Sky, Serenading Louie, The Hot L Baltimore, The Mound Builders, Angels Fall, Burn This, Redwood Curtain, Trinity, 5th Of July, Talley & Son, Talley's Folly, Book Of Days, Rain Dance and some twenty produced one act plays including Brontosaurus, The Great Nebula In Orion and the paired A Poster Of The Cosmos and The Moonshot Tape. For television: “Taxi!” (no relation to the series) and “The Migrants”, from a story by Tennessee Williams. He also wrote the libretto for Lee Hoiby's opera of Williams' Summer And Smoke and a new translation of Chekov's Three Sisters. By The Sea, By The Sea, By The Beautiful Sea (of which he wrote one of the three plays) premiered at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York in 1995 and was later done at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York City in 1996. His play, Virgil Is Still The Frogboy (now entitled A Sense Of Place), was produced by the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, New York, in August and September, 1996. His play Sympathetic Magic was produced by Second Stage in March of 1997. His play Book Of Days was commissioned by the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea, Michigan, where it opened in April 1998. Awards include the Brandeis University Creative Arts Award in Theatre Arts, The Institute of Arts and Letters Award, The Edward Albee Last Frontier Award, The John Steinbeck Award, The Drama-Logue Award (Los Angeles) for Talley's Folly and 5th Of July, two New York Drama Critic's Circle Awards for Best Play (Talley's Folly and Hot L), 2 Obie Awards for Best Play (Hot L and The Mound Builders), an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Talley's Folly). Wilson was a founder (with Tanya Berezin, Rob Thirkield and Marshall W. Mason) of The Circle Repertory Company in New York City and was a resident playwright there from 1969-1995. He was a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and made his home in Sag Harbor since 1970. He died on March 24, 2011.
MICHAEL WILSON (Director) is currently represented on Broadway by the Tony nominated revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. He received 2010 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his direction of Horton Foote’s three-part, nine-hour epic The Orphans’ Home Cycle. Broadway: The Tony nominated plays: Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate, and Matthew Barber’s Enchanted April (Outer Critics Circle nom); and the 2007 RTC revival of John Van Druten’s Old Acquaintance. Off-Broadway: Jane Anderson’s Defying Gravity, Eve Ensler’s Necessary Targets, Foote’s The Carpetbagger’s Children (Lincoln Center Theatre), Tina Howe’s Chasing Manet (Primary Stages), Christopher Shinn’s Picked (Vineyard Theatre) and What Didn’t Happen (Playwrights Horizons), Tennessee Williams’ The Red Devil Battery Sign and The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (RTC), among others. International:Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Parts 1 & 2 (Venice Biennale). Resident: A.R.T., Alley, Goodman, Guthrie, Huntington, Long Wharf, and Old Globe theaters. From 1998 to 2011, Mr. Wilson was Artistic Director of Hartford Stage, where he produced the East Coast premiere of Lanford Wilson's Book of Days.
