Tony nominee Beth Malone has signed on to headline a revival of Richard Morris and Meredith Willson's musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown as part of the 2019-2020 season of off-Broadway's Transport Group. Three-time Tony winner Kathleen Marshall will direct the production, featuring a revised book and new lyrics by Tony nominee Dick Scanlan, set to run from February 7 through March 22, 2020 at Abrons Arts Center.
Malone, a Tony nominee for Fun Home, returns to Molly Brown following a 2017 summer production at The Muny in St. Louis, directed and choreographed by Marshall and featuring Scanlan's revisions. The trio also collaborated on a 2014 mounting at Denver Theater Center, a production which earned Malone the Henry Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Musical. Malone led a high-profile reading of Molly Brown for Roundabout Theatre Company with the same creative team in late 2017.
The musical follows Margaret "Molly" Brown, whose rags-to-riches journey from the silver mines of Colorado to the heights of high society culminates in a fateful voyage on the Titanic. The musical debuted on Broadway in 1960, earning a Tony Award for star Tammy Grimes.
The Transport Group season will also include the world premiere musical Broadbend, Arkansas, featuring a book by Ellen Fitzhugh and Harrison David Rivers, music/additional lyrics by Ted Shen and direction by Obie winner Jack Cummings III. The musical centers on an African-American family grappling with decades of inequality, violence and suppression in the South. The production will run from October 25 through November 23, 2019 at The Duke on 42nd Street.
Full casting for the Transport Group season will be announced at a later date.