Acclaimed actress Jessica Chastain, winner of 2011 New York, Los Angeles and Chicago Film Critics and National Board of Review Awards and recently nominated for Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, will make her Broadway debut starring in the Tony Award-winning play The Heiress.
Written by Ruth Goetz & Augustus Goetz, The Heiress will be directed by Tony Award nominated playwright and director Moises Kaufman and will open in the Fall of 2012 at a theatre to be announced.
The Heiress will be produced by Paula Wagner, Roy Furman and Stephanie P. McClelland. This production marks 17 years since the celebrated play was last seen on Broadway. The Heiress is based on the classic Henry James novel Washington Square and became an Academy Award-winning film. The dramatic and suspenseful play features one of the great female roles written for the stage.
The original production of The Heiress, suggested by the Henry James novel Washington Square, premiered on Broadway in 1947 at the Biltmore Theatre. The 1949 Academy Award winning movie version was adapted from the play by the Goetzes, and was directed by William Wyler, starring Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift and Ralph Richardson.
Wearing a mousy brown wig and hunching her shoulders, Ms. Chastain improbably manages to simulate homeliness. And her face registers feelings sharply and legibly. But, curiously for an expert film actress, she is guilty here of oversignaling the thoughts within. She plays Catherine’s spinsterish awkwardness for broad comedy in the early scenes. And her delivery of dialogue sometimes has a flatness that I associate with cold readings of scripts. This is surely a conscious choice, but it has the effect of making Catherine seem even more, uh, mentally challenged than usual. And I never felt the urgency of filial and romantic love festering into vengeful hatred, which should inform any production of “The Heiress.”
A mostly inspired cast and design team have been assembled for a melodrama that doesn’t fall completely within the comfort zone of this adventurous director (“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” “I Am My Own Wife”).
1947 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1950 | Broadway |
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1976 | Broadway |
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1995 | Broadway |
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2012 | Broadway |
Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2013 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Judith Ivey |
2013 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play | Judith Ivey |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Costume Design of a Play | Albert Wolsky |
2013 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play | Judith Ivey |
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