NEW YORK, NY.- Adam Driver, a Broadway alumnus and prolific film and television actor best known for Girls and Star Wars, will return to the stage this fall to portray a narcissistic country-western singer in a limited-run off-Broadway comedy.
The play, Hold On to Me Darling, was written by Kenneth Lonergan, an accomplished playwright (The Waverly Gallery), screenwriter and film director. (He won an Oscar for the Manchester by the Sea screenplay.)
In Hold On to Me Darling, the main character decides to move home to Tennessee after his mother dies. The collision of a big star and a small town fuel the comedy of the play, which was first staged in 2016 at Atlantic Theater Company, an off-Broadway nonprofit.
The new production, a commercial endeavor, is to begin previews Sept. 24 and open Oct. 16 at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village. The run is scheduled to last just 13 weeks, although sometimes limited-run plays are extended.
The production will be directed by Neil Pepe, who also directed the 2016 version. Pepe is the Atlantics artistic director.
The producers of this falls run are Seaview, Sue Wagner and John Johnson, who were among the producers of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, which starred Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott and had a run at the Lortel that began last fall. That shows success helped draw the attention of producers to commercial off-Broadway, a sector of the theater business that had atrophied over time, but is now attracting more interest because the producing costs are far lower than on Broadway.
Driver, 40, is no stranger to the stage. A graduate of Juilliards acting program, he has appeared on Broadway three times, most recently starring in a 2019 revival of Burn This, and he has also performed in several previous off-Broadway productions.
Ben Brantley, then the New York Times chief theater critic, named Hold On to Me Darling among the best shows of 2016, and praised the play as a tragicomic commentary on a culture ruled by the religion of fame.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.