Yesterday, The Public Theater in downtown Manhattan announced that the line-up for its 50th anniversary season — beginning in September — will include director Oskar Eustis’ terrific production of “Compulsion” which played New Haven’s Yale Rep earlier this year.
The play by Rinne Groff (below), about the wrangling over the stage rights to Anne Frank’s diary, was a critical and audience hit in New Haven.
Mandy Patinkin (top) gave an awesome performance as New York writer Meyer Levin, who helped shepherd the diary’s U.S. publication with the understanding that he would dramatize the material for Broadway (only to see his dreams denied).
The play will be produced at the Public Theater next Feb. 1 to March 6. The season announcement did not include the casting for that production.
“Compulsion” will be the second recent Connecticut stage production to move into New York City. The Long Wharf version of “The Glass Menagerie” reopened to ecstatic reviews in New York Wednesday night (see blog post below).
The Public season also will include the New York premiere of a new play by Tony Kushner, “The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures,” which will open at the Public next March. The play debuted at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis earlier this year with a cast that included Stephen Spinella (below right, with Michael Esper) who won a Tony Award in Kushner’s landmark drama, “Angels in America.”
(The Public is already offering various membership plans for next season, starting at $55. For more information, visit www.publictheater.org.)
