B'way Update: Much Ado About Nothing

Hayley Atwell, Tom Hiddleston, and company
in Jamie Lloyd's staging of
Much Ado About Nothing.
Credit: Marc Brenner

Tony nominee Tom Hiddleston and Olivier nominee Hayley Atwell will recreate their starring roles in Jamie Lloyd's staging of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing when the production transfers from London's West End to Broadway this coming fall for a limited-ten week engagement at a Shubert theater to be announced. Hiddleston collaborated with Lloyd previously on Harold Pinter's Betrayal which played Broadway and London. Atwell is making her Broadway debut. She appeared in Lloyd's staging of The Pride and received an Olivier nomination. 

Both stars are probably best known for their recurring roles in the Marvel Comics Universe film and TV franchise. Hiddleston has played Loki, the evil brother of Thor and Atwell portrayed Agent Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger and the Agent Carter TV series.

This will be the 16th Broadway production of the Bard's comedy of clashing wills between combatants Beatrice and Benedick. Previous stagings have starred John Gielgud and Margaret Leighton (1959), Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes (1972) and Derek Jacobi (Tony Award) and Sinead Cusack (1985). Memorable Central Park versions were headlined by Kevin Kline and Blythe Danner in 1988 and by Danielle Brooks and Grantham Coleman in 2019. Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a film version in 1993 opposite his then-wife Emma Thompson.

2019-20 Broadway Season Forecast

July is here and that means the 2018-19 Broadway season is officially done with and the next one is underway. Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, the revival of Terrence McNally's 1988 two-hander, was the first official production of the season, opening in May. The summer is pretty slow this year with only two Broadway openings confirmed--Moulin Rouge, the stage version of Baz Luhrmann's gaudy and superficial 2001 film musical and Sea Wall/A Life, a transfer of a pair of solo pieces starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tom Sturridge which played the Public Theater earlier this year. Tea at Five, the one-woman play starring Faye Dunaway as Katharine Hepburn, was supposed to open sometime during the summer, as was an all-female staging of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. But neither ever secured a theater and their future is uncertain. Tea at Five is now playing Boston's Huntington Theater through July 14.

Here's a rundown of announced Broadway openings for 2019-20:

Charlie Cox, Zawe Ashton, and Tom Hiddleston in Betrayal.
Credit: Marc Brenner

Betrayal: Harold Pinter's reverse-chronicle triangle drama returns to Broadway for its third revival with Tom Hiddleston, Zawe Ashton and Charlie Cox making their Broadway debuts after a smashing success in London's West End. (Original: 1980 with Raul Julia, Blythe Danner, and Roy Scheider, Reprised in 2001 with Liev Schreiber, Juliette Binoche and John Slattery, and in 2013 with Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Rafe Spall). (Jacobs/Sept. 15)

Derren Brown: Secret--The magician and mentalist brings his Drama Desk winning show to Broadway after a run at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2017.

The Height of the Storm--Manhattan Theater Club opens its Broadway season with this drama by French playwright Florian Zeller starring Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce repeating their London performances as a couple who, not unlike the protagonists of Zeller's plays The Father and The Mother, face uncertainty and despair after decades of marriage.