BROADWAY.COM – A revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero and a new production of Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men will be the first two productions to play Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre under the ownership of the nonprofit Second Stage Theatre. Second Stage purchased the historic Hayes in 2015.
Michael Cera will play Jeff and Chris Evans will play Bill in Lobby Hero, directed by Trip Cullman, set to begin performances in March 2018. Straight White Men, directed by Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro, will begin its run in July 2018. Exact dates for both productions will be announced.
In Lobby Hero, a young security guard (Cera) with big ambitions clashes with his stern boss (Evans), an intense rookie cop and her unpredictable partner. Lobby Hero first debuted off-Broadway with Playwrights Horizons for a run from February 16-March 25, 2001. Lonergan, whose history with Second Stage includes acclaimed original productions of This Is Our Youth (Cera appeared in a 2014 Broadway revival of the play) and The Waverly Gallery, won the 2017 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Manchester by the Sea.
In Straight White Men, it’s Christmas Eve, and Ed has gathered his three adult sons to celebrate with matching pajamas, trash-talking, and Chinese takeout. But when a question they can’t answer interrupts their holiday cheer, they are forced to confront their own identities. Straight White Men received an off-Broadway production directed by Lee at the Public Theater from November 7-December 14, 2014. With its opening at the Helen Hayes Theatre, Lee becomes Broadway’s Asian-American female playwright. Her other plays include Church and We’re Gonna Die.
Second Stage will continue to produce at its off-Broadway home, the Tony Kiser Theater. The season will include the New York premiere of Tracy Letts’s Mary Page Marlowe in June of 2018. Letts’ play Man from Nebraska, concluded a recent run at Second Stage. The director of Mary Page Marlowe will be announced at a later date. Mary Page Marlowe is described as a seemingly ordinary accountant from Ohio who has experienced pain and joy, success and failure.
Second Stage has also announced the co-commission of playwrights with Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group. Plays by these scribes will begin at CTG and then transfer to New York. These commissioned playwrights will be Young Jean Lee, Tony nominee Jon Robin Baitz, Will Eno, Tony winner Lisa Kron, and Pulitzer winners Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel (who are both currently represented on Broadway with Sweat and Indecent, respectively). Second Stage will also co-commission a new work from Bess Wohl for Broadway.
The upcoming Second Stage off-Broadway season will also include the previously announced revival of Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song, directed by Moisés Kaufman. Performances will begin in September 2017.
