Film star Chris Evans will make his Broadway debut in Oscar winner Kenneth Lonergan's Lobby Hero, marking the first production of Second Stage Theatre's inaugural Broadway season. Performances will begin March 2018 at the newly renovated Helen Hayes Theatre.
Trip Cullman (Six Degrees of Separation, Significant Other) will direct the production, which will also feature Broadway alum Michael Cera (This Is Our Youth).
The season will also include Young Jean Lee's Straight White Men, directed by Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro. The staging, set for July 2018, will mark the first time a play written by an Asian woman has been produced on Broadway.
Also announced is an addition to Second Stage's Off-Broadway lineup at the Tony Kiser Theater. Joining the previously announced Torch Song is the New York premiere of Tracy Letts' Mary Page Marlowe. Performances will begin June 2018.
The theatre company will also launch the Stage-2-Stage program alongside Los Angeles' Center Theatre Group. The initiative will offer a Los Angeles world premiere at CTG to commissioned playwrights before their work moves to New York. Among the writers who will be a part of this program are Lee, Jon Robin Baitz, Will Eno, Lisa Kron, Lynn Nottage, and Paula Vogel.Second Stage has also co-commissioned a work from Bess Wohl with the Williamstown Theatre Festival for a forthcoming Broadway premiere, as well as new Broadway plays from Lydia R. Diamond and Dominique Morisseau to be developed in association with Kenny Leon's True Colors Theatre.
Lobby Hero premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2001. It tells the story of four New Yorkers involved in a murder investigation in the lobby of a Manhattan apartment complex: a 27-year-old security guard, his stern boss, a young police officer, and her unpredictable partner.
Straight White Men received its New York premiere at the Public Theater in 2014 in a production that Lee also directed. The Obie Award winner's play is a subversive approach to the father-son drama and takes place on Christmas Eve as Ed and his three adult sons confront their identities during a night of Chinese takeout, pajamas, and trash-talking.
Take a look at photos from the Public Theater production below.
Casting for each of these productions, as well as an additional Off-Broadway title, will be announced at a later date.
Evans and Cera appeared together previously in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Check out the clip below of Cera being on the receiving end of Evans' movie star aggression.
