Common will step onto a Broadway stage for the first time this winter in Second Stage Theater’s Between Riverside and Crazy.
The rapper and actor — who is a Tony Award short of becoming an EGOT winner — was announced on Friday as part of the cast of the upcoming Broadway production from writer Stephen Adly Guirgis and director Austin Pendleton. The show will begin previews on Nov. 30 before opening on Dec. 19 at Second Stage’s Hayes Theater.
Common will star in the dark comedy as the recently paroled Junior, son of ex-cop and recent widower Walter “Pops” Washington (played by Stephen McKinley Henderson). The play follows the duo as they fight to hold on to one of the last rent-stabilized apartments on Riverside Drive amid the rehashing of old wounds and in the face of sketchy new houseguests and a final ultimatum.
Common will join several previously announced Off-Broadway cast members returning to their roles including Henderson, Victor Almanzar, Elizabeth Canavan, Rosal Colón, Liza Colón-Zayas and Michael Rispoli.
The Broadway production’s creative team includes Walt Spangler, who is heading up scenic design, and Alexis Forte, who will lead costume design, with lighting design by Keith Parham and both sound design and original music by Ryan Rumery. Casting is by Telsey + Company.
After a limited run opening Off-Broadway at The Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater in July 2014, Second Stage produced a limited off-Broadway run of Between Riverside and Crazy from February to March 2015 at the Tony Kiser Theatre.
Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for drama, the 2015 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play and the 2015 Lucille Lortel Award for outstanding play, among a number of other honors.
This story was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
