The upcoming Rialto season is beginning to take shape, with the Roundabout Theater Company adding two revivals to its 2013-14 Broadway slate.
A new production of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing,” helmed by Sam Gold, and a staging of Donald Margulies’ “Dinner With Friends,” directed by Pam MacKinnon will join a slate that includes fall revivals of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” and Harold Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” — running in rep in a commercial outing starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart — and the Roundabout’s previously announced revival of “The Philadelphia Story,” to be directed by Alex Timbers (“Rocky,” “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”).
There’s also a new play, “Human,” penned by and starring Chazz Palminteri, set for a run sometime next season, along with a a handful of other still percolating projects. Roundabout hasn’t set dates or casts for its three Broadway plays, but given the nonprofit’s track record in recent years, it’s likely it will incorporate some stars to draw buzz and biz. A recent revival of “Picnic” featured familiar faces including Ellen Burstyn, while Bobby Cannavale toplines its upcoming production of “The Big Knife.”
Gold, the “Picnic” helmer whose Off Broadway work (“Circle Mirror Transformation”) has turned heads, directs the Stoppard play-within-a-play tale about a married playwright and the woman he falls for. The 1982 title hasn’t been on Broadway since 2000, in a transfer of a Donmar Warehouse production that starred Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle.
“Dinner With Friends,” Margulies’ play about the changing relationship between two couples, has never appeared on the Rialto, but its commercial production in 1999 ran Off Broadway for more than a year and a half. MacKinnon helmed the Tony-winning production of “Clybourne Park” as well as the recently shuttered revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
Although the 2013-14 season remains sparse, the roster will grow as the Roundabout’s fellow nonprofits — Manhattan Theater Club and Lincoln Center Theater — announce their lineups in the coming weeks.Judging from the current season, expect a number of star-driven limited engagements to join the fray, too.
Meanwhile, next season already has tuners in the mix, including “Big Fish,” “If/Then,” “Aladdin” and a revival of “Les Miserables.”
