Williamstown Casting: Bradley Cooper Goes West, Jayne Atkinson Heads to Cambridge
East Coast summer theater hotspot Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced casting for its four-show 2009 Main Stage season.
The festivities kick off July 1-12 with A.R. Gurney’s Children, a family-reunion drama set on July 4, 1976. This co-production with Connecticut’s Westport County Playhouse where it runs May 26-June 13 stars Mary Bacon Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tony winner Katie Finneran Noises Off, Judith Light Wit, ABC’s Ugly Betty and James Waterston Buffalo Gal; John Tillinger, known for his work on Gurney’s Love Letters, directs.
Bradley Cooper—the film star last seen loving and leaving Scarlett Johansson in He’s Just Not That Into You, best known on Broadway for 2006’s Three Days of Rain, last seen at Williamstown in Theresa Rebeck’s 2008 premiere The Understudy—will step into True West, running July 15-26, replacing former The Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry. Side note: Corddry had a small role in Cooper’s 2006 film Failure to Launch. Cooper will be engaging in that down-and-dirty Sam Shepard-scripted sibling rivalry opposite Rob’s real-life brother Nate Corddry Showtime’s United States of Tara. Stephen Kunken Frost/Nixon, Rock ‘n’ Roll and That ’70s Show mom Debra Jo Rupp complete the cast; Daniel Goldstein Walmartopia directs.
Next, actor Dylan Baker adapts and directs George Kelly’s 1922 backstage romp The Torch-Bearers, playing July 29-Aug. 9. For this wacky farce about a bunch of amateur actors, Baker has corralled, among others, his wife, Becky Ann Baker All My Sons, Assassins, his Mauritius costar Katie Finneran, Tony winner Marian Seldes A Delicate Balance, Emmy and Tony winner Edward Herrmann The Practice, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, five-time Tony nominee Dana Ivey, Jessica Hecht After the Fall, Lizbeth MacKay Crimes of the Heart, Yusef Bulos, John Doherty, Philip Goodwin and James Waterston.
And to close the season Aug. 12-23, Maria Aitken The 39 Steps directs Simon Gray’s 1981 academic comedy Quartermaine’s Terms. Jefferson Mays, the Tony-winning star of I Am My Own Wife, will play the lonely bachelor English teacher Quartermaine. His Cambridge colleagues will be played by Jayne Atkinson—currently battling the ghost of Christine Ebersole in Broadway’s Blithe Spirit—Jeremy Beck Betrayed, Morgan Hallett Translations, John Horton A Touch of the Poet, Simon Jones also in Blithe Spirit and Stephen Kunken.
Casting details for the Nikos Stage season—Jonathan Marc Sherman’s Knickerbocker July 8-19, Noah Haidle’s What Is the Cause of Thunder? July 22-Aug. 2 and Melinda Lopez’s Caroline in Jersey Aug. 5-16—are forthcoming.
The Williamstown Theatre Festival, located in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts, was founded in 1955; Nicholas Martin currently serves as the artistic director.
