Hollywood star and multiple Tony Award-winning Broadway legend Matthew Broderick – renowned for roles including Ferris Bueller in the iconic movie and Leo Bloom in The Producers – is to make his West End debut in in The Starry Messenger by Kenneth Lonergan, the Academy Award-winning writer of Manchester-By-The-Sea.
The production, directed by Sam Yates (Glengarry Glen Ross), also stars Elizabeth McGovern, known to millions for her portrayal of Lady Cora in the multi award-winning drama series Downton Abbey. The Starry Messenger will begin performances at the Wyndham’s Theatre on 16 May (press night is 29 May) and plays a strictly limited 13-week season until 10 August.
Mark Williams is lost. An astronomer at New York City’s Planetarium, he feels a closer connection to the infinite, starry sky than to his job or even to his wife, Anne. Mark doesn’t believe in fate or divine intervention, but the universe has other ideas.
After a chance meeting with Angela, a young single mother, the stars appear to have aligned. But when a catastrophic event rips through their lives, Mark is forced to re-evaluate his life, his faith and his place in the universe itself.
Further casting to be announced.
Bios
Two-time Tony award-winning stage actor Matthew Broderick is an instantly recognisable film presence. He was last seen on screen in Rules Don’t Apply, directed by and starring Warren Beatty; as well as Manchester By The Sea, directed by Kenneth Lonergan.
On stage, Broderick was last seen in The Seafarer at the Irish Repertory Theatre and The Closet at the 2018 Williamstown Theater Festival. He previously starred in The New Group’s US premiere of Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House at the Pershing Square Signature Center and in the Off-Broadway production of Shining City at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Other theatre credits include A. R. Gurney’s comedy Sylvia; the smash Broadway hit It’s Only a Play opposite his frequent co-star Nathan Lane; the award-winning Broadway run of Nice Work If You Can Get It; the Broadway production of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple; and The Foreigner at the Roundabout Theatre. In 2005, he starred in the feature film version of The Producers, reprising his Tony-nominated performance he gave during the record-breaking production on Broadway.
Broderick won his first Tony Award for Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, and starred in the play’s sequel, Biloxi Blues. He won his second Tony for his role as J. Pierrepont Finch, in the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Elizabeth McGovern’s career spans theatre, film and television. Elizabeth is most well known for her role as Lady Cora in multiple award winning television show Downton Abbey, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy and won a SAG. She can currently be seen in Bjorn Runge’s The Wife, in which she stars opposite Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. In 2016 McGovern starred at The National Theatre in the new Alexi Kaye Campbell play Sunset At The Villa Thalia. Major film roles have included starring opposite Robert De Niro in Once Upon a Time in America and Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage in Racing With the Moon.
On the london stage, notable productions include The Misanthrope at the Young Vic, Three Days of Rain at the Donmar and David Mamet’s The Shawl at the Arcola Theatre.
