Ryan O'Connor's new queer adaptation of Noël Coward's Hay Fever, now titled The Cowards, is presented in a benefit reading in Los Angeles October 21. Presented by After Hours Theatre Company and the Los Angeles LGBT Center, proceeds from the event will support the latter.

Starring are Marissa Jaret Winokur (Hairspray), Alexandra Billings (Wicked), Brendan Jordan, Vico Ortiz (Our Flag Means Death), George Salazar (Be More Chill), Charlie Barnett (Chicago Fire), Nhut Le (Peacemaker), Elle Duran (Home Street Home), and O'Connor. Nori Reed will read stage directions. Casting is by Conrad Woolfe and Leigh Ann Smith of Indigo Casting.

Coward's original farce centers on the Bliss family, who each invite a guest to spend the weekend at their English country house in the 1920s, only for their narcissism to drive their guests to flee. In O'Connor's take, we follow the Cowards, a dysfunctional chosen family unit who have invited guests to their Provincetown, Massachusetts, home.

O'Connor is an actor-director-writer who has appeared on Big Little Lies and How I Met Your Mother, and counts productions of Jimi Darkness: Alcoholic Superhero and A Little Night Music on his directing résumé. The Cowards will be O'Connor's full-length playwriting debut.

For tickets, visit LALGBTCenter.org.