FAR FROM HEAVEN Musical to Play Williamstown Theater Festival This Summer; Opens Off-Broadway in 2013

Playwrights Horizons will present FAR FROM HEAVEN, a new musical with book by Tony Award winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, Three Days of Rain), music by Tony Award nominee Scott Frankel (Grey Gardens) and lyrics by Tony Award nominee Michael Korie (Grey Gardens, The Grapes of Wrath), in Spring 2013.  The show will also play Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer.

The musical was adapted from the acclaimed, award-winning 2002 Focus Features/Vulcan Productions motion picture Far From Heaven, written and directed by Todd Haynes.   Casting has not yet been announced.

FAR FROM HEAVEN tells the story of Cathy Whitaker, a 1950s housewife living in suburban Hartford who watches as her seemingly perfect life begin to fall apart.  The film echoes "women's films" of the 1950s (especially those of Douglas Sirk, director of All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life) to tell a story that deals with complex contemporary issues including sexual and racial prejudice.
  
The original 2002 film, which stars Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Haysbert and Patricia Clarkson, has earned over 100 awards, honors and nominations.  It was nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Actress (Julianne Moore), Best Original Screenplay (Todd Haynes), Best Cinematography (Edward Lachman) and Best Original Score (Elmer Bernstein), and was named one of the 10 Best Movies of the Decade by Entertainment Weekly.  It was also named Best Film of the Year by the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, Independent Spirit Awards and the Village Voice, among many others.  Far From Heaven also earned 4 Golden Globe nominations including Best Screenplay, a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and a bevy of additional awards for leading actress Julianne Moore, including one from the National Board of Review Award and nominations from the Screen Actors Guild and the Golden Globes.
    
The full season is as follows:

DETROIT – the New York premiere of a new play by Lisa D’Amour (2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist and 2011 Steinberg Playwright Award winner for this play, Obie Award winner for Nita and Zita), directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman (Maple and Vine at Playwrights Horizons, The Thugs, Stunning, Naked Angels’ This Wide Night), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater. DETROIT will be the first production of the season, beginning performances in August 2012.

THE WHALE – the New York premiere of a new play by Obie Award winner Samuel D. Hunter (A Bright New Boise), directed by Davis McCallum (A Bright New Boise, Queens Boulevard, Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue) presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater.

THE GREAT GOD PAN – the World Premiere of a new play by Amy Herzog (After the Revolution at PH, 4000 Miles), directed by Carolyn Cantor (After the Revolution and Essential Self-Defense at PH, Pumpgirl, Orange Water Flower), the play will be presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater.

THE FLICK – the World Premiere of a new play commissioned by Playwrights Horizons with funds from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, by Obie Award winner Annie Baker (Circle Mirror Transformation at PH, The Aliens, Body Awareness), directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold (Circle Mirror Transformation, Kin and the upcoming The Big Meal at PH; Seminar on Broadway, The Aliens, The Coward), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Mainstage Theater.

THE CALL – the World Premiere of a new play by Tanya Barfield (Blue Door at PH), directed by Obie Award winner Leigh Silverman (Go Back to Where You Are and Blue Door for PH; Chinglish, Well, In the Wake), presented at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theater.