HARTFORD, CT — March 5, 2018 — Hartford
Stage Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak and Managing
Director Michael Stotts announced today the cast and creative
team for the world premiere of The Age of Innocence, which will
perform at Hartford Stage Thursday, April 5, through Sunday, May 6. The production is presented in association with the McCarter Theatre Center.
The Age
of Innocence has been adapted for the stage by Oscar, Tony and Emmy Award nominee Douglas McGrath. Tony Award Winner Doug Hughes will direct. Four-time Tony Award winner Boyd Gaines leads the cast, which
features Sierra Boggess, Helen Cespedes, and Andrew Veenstra.
The Age of
Innocence, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921, is one of
Edith Wharton’s most memorable novels. Set during the Gilded Age in New York,
McGrath’s powerful and poignant adaptation introduces us to the courtly young
gentleman lawyer Newland Archer; his traditional and demure fiancée May; and
the free-spirited Countess Ellen Olenska, who has come home from Europe,
tainted by scandal. From the moment Newland meets the Countess, he is torn
between virtue and desire, and all three are forced to make the agonizing choice,
ever old and ever new, between love and honor.
“Douglas McGrath and Doug Hughes are
bringing this splendid adaptation of Edith Wharton’s masterpiece to Hartford
Stage,” Tresnjak said. “The wonderful Boyd Gaines, winner of four Tony Awards,
leads a renowned cast featuring Sierra Boggess, Helen Cespedes, and Andrew
Veenstra. We are thrilled to welcome all of them to Hartford Stage.”
Playwright and screenwriter Douglas McGrath received a Tony Award nomination for Best Book for Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. His first film as a writer and director was his adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. He co-wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-nominated film Bullets Over Broadway, which transferred to Broadway as a Tony Award-nominated musical. McGrath’s other films include his adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, Infamous, and the HBO documentary His Way. He also earned an Emmy nomination for the HBO documentary Becoming Mike Nichols.
Director Doug Hughes won
the 2005 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for Doubt. He also
received a Tony Award nomination for the play Frozen, which
performed at Circle in the Square on Broadway. He directed Ayad Akhtar’s celebrated play Junk
on Broadway last year. Several productions transferred to
Off-Broadway during his tenure as Artistic Director of Long Wharf Theatre from
1997 to 2001, including Wit, Red, and Down the
Garden Paths. Hughes has been the Associate Artistic Director of the
Manhattan Theatre Club and Director of Artistic Planning of the Guthrie
Theater. As Resident Director of the Roundabout Theatre, Hughes directed The
Big Knife in 2013 and Mrs. Warren’s Profession in
2010.
Acclaimed actor Boyd Gaines will portray The Old Gentleman in The Age of Innocence. Gaines is a four-time Tony Award Winner –
receiving recognition for his work in The
Heidi Chronicles (Best Featured Actor in a Play – 1989), She Loves Me (Best Actor in a Musical –
1994), Contact (Best Featured Actor
in a Musical – 2000), and Gypsy (Best
Featured Actor in a Musical – 2008). He
most recently appeared in the Broadway production of the play An Enemy of the People. His many
television and film credits include The
Good Wife, L.A. Law, One Day at a Time, Fame, The Sure Thing and Heartbreak Ridge.
Actress Sierra
Boggess, who originated the role of Ariel in The Little
Mermaid on Broadway, a musical based on the 1989 Disney animated film,
will portray Countess Ellen Olenska. Boggess is also well-known for her
portrayal of Christine Daaé in numerous productions of Andrew Lloyd
Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Boggess was cast to reimagine
the role in Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of
the Opera. She began her career in the Ensemble and as understudy for
Cosette on the U.S. national tour of Les Misérables. Boggess also appeared in the musical Princesses at
the Goodspeed Opera House. Additional credits include the Off-Broadway
production of The Secret Garden, the original West End production
of School of Rock, and the original Broadway production of Love,
Loss and What I Wore.
Actress Helen Cespedes will
portray May Welland. The Julliard School of Drama graduate’s New York credits
include the Off-Broadway production of A
Picture of Autumn at The Mint Theatre and a staged reading of The Rose Tattoo at The Acting Company,
directed by Doug Hughes. Cespedes has also appeared in regional productions of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Old Globe Theatre and The Women of Padilla
at Two River Theater. She appeared in the Stephen Soderbergh HBO series The Knick and the film short The Way I Remember It with Christine Ebersole.
Stage and screen actor Andrew
Veenstra will portray Newland Archer. Veenstra played the lead role of
Albert Narracott in the first U.S. tour of the Tony Award-winning play War
Horse. He starred as John Wilkes Booth in the world premiere of the Off-Broadway
production of An Error of the Moon and as Hamlet at
the Lincoln Center Theater. Veenstra’s regional credits include Romeo
and Juliet, As You Like It, Two Gentleman of Verona and
the world premiere of David Ives’ The Heir Apparent with the
Shakespeare Theatre Company at the Lansburgh Theatre in Washington, D.C. His television appearances include Unveiled, Bones and Law
and Order: SVU.
Joining Gaines, Boggess,
Cespedes, and Veenstra in the company of The Age of Innocence are
Darrie Lawrence (The Humans, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; The
Killing of Sister George, The Actors Company Theatre-TACT) as Mrs. Manson
Mingott; Deirdre Madigan (After the Night and the Music,
Broadway; And a Nightingale Sang, Westport Country Playhouse) as
Mrs. Welland, Mrs. Van Der Luyden and Florist; Haviland Morris (Bad
Dates, Long Wharf Theatre; Arcadia; Broadway; film Sixteen
Candles) as Mrs. Archer; Josh Salt (Les Liaisons
Dangereuses, Broadway; Pride and Prejudice, Center Stage) as
Thorley, Riviere and Dallas; Tony Ward (The Front Page and The
Audience on Broadway) as Mr. Van Der Luyden, Larry Lefferts and Letterblair;
and Nick Wyman (Catch Me if You Can and A Tale
of Two Cities on Broadway) as Julius Beaufort, Sillerton Jackson and Mr.
Hickey.
Sara Norton, Daniel Owens, Sara
Schwab and Alessandro Gian Viviano,
students from The Hartt
School at the University of Hartford, are cast in the Ensemble.
In addition to McGrath and Hughes,
the creative team includes Set Designer John Lee Beatty (designer
of over 110 Broadway productions, including Sweat and Disgraced,
Tony Award winner for The Nance and Talley’s Folly);
Costume Designer Linda Cho (the new musical Anastasia,
Hartford Stage and Broadway – Tony Award Nomination; A Gentleman’s
Guide to Love and Murder, Hartford Stage and Broadway – Tony Award Winner for
Costume Design of a Musical; Rear Window, Hartford Stage); Lighting
Designer Ben Stanton (Fun Home – 2015 Tony Award
Nomination; Spring Awakening – 2016 Tony Award Nomination); and
Sound Design and Original Music by Mark Bennett (Junk; Vanya
and Sonia and Masha and Spike on Broadway).
Lori Lundquist (Ether
Dome, Hartford Stage; The Wolves, The Playwrights Realm)
will serve as Production Stage Manager, with Jared Oberholtzer (Vanya
and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Hartford Stage; Illyria, Joseph
Papp Public Theater/Anspacher Theater – Stage Manager) as Assistant Stage
Manager.
