The New Group's 2019-2020 season to include Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage
The New Group season will also include a world premiere musical by Duncan Sheik and Jonathan Marc Sherman and world premiere plays by Donja R. Love and Thomas Bradshaw.
"Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage is heading back to the New York stage! The New Group announced four new productions as part of its 2019-2020 Off-Broadway season today, kicking off with Cyrano (based on Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand), adapated and directed by Dinklage's wife, Erica Schmidt (currently represented off-Broadway by her Red Bull Theater production of Mac Beth). Performances are expected to begin in fall 2019 at the Daryl Roth Theatre.
Synopsis: "A raw and transporting new version of the classic tale of unrequited love and ghostwritten letters, Cyrano tells the story of a proud man who believing himself unlovable, agrees to woo the woman he loves for another. With a charged contemporary immediacy to the language, this adaptation by Erica Schmidt mines this enduring, human story for its deep vein of heartbroken yearning, with haunting and compelling music by members of the Grammy Award-winning band The National and the Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning actor Peter Dinklage in the title role."
Featuring music by Aaron Dessner & Bryce Dessner of The National, and lyrics by Matt Berninger of The National & Carin Besser, the production will be choreographed by Jeff and Rick Kuperman.
Back in August 2018, a developmental production of Cyrano was presented by Goodspeed Musicals.
The New Group continues its 2019-2020 season at Pershing Square Signature Center with the world premiere of one in two, written by Donja R. Love and directed by Stevie Walker-Webb.
Synopsis: "Three young men. One of them will be chosen. They will tell 'his' story. A story they're forced to tell over and over again about his new reality and how he lives with it - until he can't. With riveting simplicity and theatricality, Donja R. Love turns his emotionally frank and lyrical voice to an intimate story that is shared by many. one in two is a play about what theater can do, and what it means to not be alone."
Performances are expected to begin at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre in fall 2019.
Next up is the world premiere musical Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, featuring a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman, with music & lyrics by Duncan Sheik (who is also set to star in the cast). The tuner is based on the Columbia Pictures motion picture, written by Mazursky and Larry Tucker and directed by Paul Mazursky.
Synopsis: "A bittersweet comic take on the sexual revolution in which the suavely conventional lives of two successful young couples, all friends, are both stirred and shaken when they open their minds to the changing attitudes around them. Duncan Sheik and Jonathan Marc Sherman evoke both the confusions of the time, and the hard timeless lessons of marriage and emotional commitment, inspired by the brilliant and irreverent Oscar-nominated film."
Directed by Scott Elliott and choreographed by Kelly Devine, the new musical will begin performances at The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre in winter 2020.
The final production of the 2019-2020 Off-Broadway season will be the world premiere of The Seagull/Woodstock, NY, written by Thomas Bradshaw (based on the Chekhov classic) and directed by Scott Elliott.
Synopsis: "Thomas Bradshaw returns to The New Group with a new adaptation based on Chekhov's early masterpiece. A group of New York theater people retreat to a house upstate to get away from it all, but there's no escaping the ambition and rivalries that torture them - or the absurd ways they inadvertently torture each other. Chekhov's sharp satirical eye for hypocrisy, self-absorption and compromise among loving, well-meaning people is given fresh, fun emphasis in Bradshaw's contemporary reworking."
Performances for The Seagull/Woodstock, NY are expected to begin in spring 2020 at The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre within the Pershing Square Signature Center.
Exact dates and additional casting and creative team information for all four productions will be announced in due course.
(Photo courtesy of The New Group)
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