Kelli O'Hara Headed to Williamstown This Summer
To Star in a New Musical Far From Heaven
By: Charles Giuliano - Feb 24, 2012
The Williamstown Theatre Festival is scheduled to announce its coming season this Tuesday in the Faculty Club of Williams College at 9am.
The meet and greet with artistic director, Jenny Gerstenm setting forth plans for her second season will occur the morning after a reading sponsored by WTF at the Clark Art Institute.
John Douglas Thompson will star in a reading of The Misanthrope by Moliere.
The actor is well known to Berkshire audiences for his many roles with Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. This summer he will premiere Satchmo at the Waldorf a one man show written by Wall Street Journal drama critic and jazz authority Terry Teachout. From Williamstown Thompson will be on his way to Chicago to start rehearsals of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh at the Goodman Theatre with Brian Dennehy and Nathan Lane.
This past season Thompson was a part of a production of King Lear at the Public Theatre in New York with Sam Waterson as Lear. Kelli O'Hara was a part of that production as well.
Now. Surprise surprise.
On the Friday afternoon leading into the weekend leading into the Reading and Season Schedule announcement there is breaking news.
As reported in Broadway.com "Three-time Tony Award nominee Kelli O'Hara will star in the previously announced musical adaptation of the 2002 film Far From Heaven at Williamstown Theatre Festival. Directed by Michael Grief and featuring a score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie and book by Richard Greenberg, the show will run at the summer theater’s Main Stage from July 19 through 29."
Our colleague Larry Murray has full coverage in Berkshire On Stage.
Recently to prepare for this much anticipated new work we viewed the 2002 film Far from Heaven starring Julianne Moore on Netflix.
A decade later, frankly, it seems like a dark and dated subject for a musical. The most enduring aspect of the film is the rich and melodious score by Elmer Bernstein. It will be interesting to see the extent of the use or influence of the Bernstein score in the adaption by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie. Surely it was the original soundtrack which inspired the notion of reworking the film as a musical.
It will also be interesting to note the casting to go along with O'Hara as the Hartford based, 1950s house wife. In the film her closeted husband was played by Dennis Quaid while a then unknown Dennis Haysbert performed as the love interest her black gardner. Today he is well known as the lead of the TV adventure series The Unit and for his All State Insurance ads.
The timing of the 'leak' so close to the scheduled press conference is cause for speculation. It has the result of WTF making news before it is scheduled to announce the news. There will of course be another bump when the news is 'officially' announced.
It begs the question as to whether there will be anything "newsworthy" during the official 9 am press conference.
Perhaps some theatre reporters will be tempted to sleep in on Tuesday morning after staying up late the night before.