Just don’t call it an American horror story. Lange and Byrne will play the grandiose aging matinee idol James Tyrone, famed as the Count Of Monte Cristo, and his morphine-addicted wife Mary in Jonathan Kent’s new revival of the Eugene O’Neill modern classic. The production, slated for next spring, will be a Roundabout Theatre Company presentation, with enhancement funding from Ryan Murphy, the producer of Lange‘s successful American Horror Story franchise on FX.
Lange has been promising to play the role on Broadway ever since she won great notices and an Olivier Award nomination for a 2000 West End revival staged by Robin Phillips and co-starring Charles Dance. Guardian critic Michael Billington wrote that “Lange, in a magnificently unsentimental performance, reminds us that Mary is a woman who constantly twists the knife in the family’s wounds. You can argue that her addiction is to blame; and Lange captures astonishingly Mary’s transition during the day from nervous, hankie-twisting tension to dreamy narcotic escape. But, without judging the character, Lange shows it is her endless picking at the familial scabs that is the real source of agony.”
Byrne (In Treatment) returns to O’Neill on Broadway, having led key revivals of A Moon For The Misbegotten and (for the Roundabout) A Touch Of The Poet. Tony Award-winner John Gallagher (Spring Awakening; recently of The Newsroom) has signed on to play their sickly son Edmund. The rest of the cast and team will be announced later.
Previews for the limited run are slated to begin March 31, 2016 at the Roundabout’s Broadway flagship, the American Airlines Theatre. Opening night is April 19.
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