Daphne Rubin-Vega and Wood Harris Join Broadway Revival of A Streetcar Named Desire
Two-time Tony Award nominee Daphne Rubin-Vega and Wood Harris (of TV’s The Wire) will play Stella Kowalski and Harold “Mitch” Mitchell opposite previously announced stars Blair Underwood (Stanley Kowalski) and Nicole Ari Parker (Blanche DuBois) in the forthcoming Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. The play will open on Broadway in spring 2012 at a yet-to-be-determined theater, directed by Emily Mann, with music by Terence Blanchard.
Streetcar tells the tragic story of fragile former schoolteacher Blanche, who leaves the family plantation house and moves to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella, and Stella’s animalistic husband, Stanley. She quickly gets a gritty life lesson in the seamy, steamy underbelly of 1940s life in the French Quarter. (Harris' character embarks on a star-crossed flirtation with Blanche.) The play was last revived on Broadway in 2005 with Natasha Richardson, Amy Ryan and John C. Reilly; a 1992 Broadway production starred Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin. Cate Blanchett starred as Blanche in an Australian production that played BAM in 2009.
Rubin-Vega received Tony nominations for creating the role of Mimi Marquez in Rent and for Anna in the Tropics. She has appeared on Broadway in Les Miserables and The Rocky Horror Show and off-Broadway in Blood from a Stone, Jack Goes Boating, Everything’s Turning Into Beautiful, Fucking A, Two Sisters and a Piano and more. Her performance in the movie adaptation of Jack Goes Boating was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.
Harris is best known for playing drug kingpin Avon Barksdale in the HBO series The Wire and Julius “Big Ju” Campbell in the feature film Remember the Titans. He has appeared off-Broadway in A Soldier’s Play and Troilus and Cressida. Additional feature film credits include Sweetwater, Just Another Day and Above the Rim.
A Streetcar Named Desire is being produced on Broadway by Stephen Byrd and Alia Jones of Front Row Productions, which presented the hit 2008 Broadway revival of Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof featuring an African-American cast led by James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose and Terrence Howard.
