Romeo & Juliet: Brent Carver & Chuck Cooper join cast

Tony Award-winning actor Brent Carver (Kiss of the Spider Woman) will play 'Friar Laurence' in the new Broadway production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Tony Award winner Chuck Cooper (The Life) also joins the cast, taking on the role of 'Lord Capulet,' in place of the previously announced Joe Morton, who is unable to continue with the production due to scheduling conflicts with his TV work.

As previously announced Romeo and Juliet, directed by five-time Tony Award nominee David Leveaux, will star Orlando Bloom, in his Broadway debut, alongside Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad (Stick Fly), as Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers.

The production will also star two-time Tony Award nominee Jayne Houdyshell (Follies, Well) as 'Nurse.' Further casting and additional creative team members will be announced at a later date.

Romeo and Juliet will open at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre on 19 Sep 2013, following previews from 24 Aug, and play a limited engagement through to 12 Jan 2014.

This production will mark the first time in 36 years that Romeo and Juliet will be produced for Broadway. This version of the classic tale will retain Shakespeare's original language but have a modern setting in which members of the contentious Montague and Capulet families will be of differing ethnicities.

One of Shakespeare's best known plays, Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic-romances dating back over 500 years. The famous youthful lovers first appeared in Italian novella in the 1500's and gained popularity in England after being adapted and translated into English by Arthur Brooke in 1562.

As described in Brooke's poem, "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" - on which Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is based - while the Montagues and Capulets are from different "races" or "stocks" their deadly feud is not based on their race, but rather on the "grudging envy" of men of "equal state."

In this new production, the members of the Montague household will be white, and the blood relatives of the Capulet family will be black. While race defines the family lineages, the original cause of the 'ancient quarrel', passed down by successive generations to their young, has been lost to time. Shakespeare's dramatization of the original poem sets the two young lovers in a context of prejudice, authoritarian parents, and a never ending cycle of 'revenge.' Against this background, the strength of their love changes the world.

Director David Leveaux said

Shakespeare did not only write of his world - he imagined ours. The very improbability that two young people might, through their imaginations and their courage, change the world by overcoming the cynical tyranny of division handed down to them by their elders, is the best and happily most improbable reason I can imagine to bring this story to the Broadway stage today.