Eric McCormack Joins GORE VIDAL'S THE BEST MAN

Emmy Award winner Eric McCormack will return to Broadway as presidential contender Joseph Cantwell in the star-studded cast of the 2012 Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's THE BEST MAN. The role of Senator Cantwell was played by Cliff Robertson in the film adaptation and Chris Noth in the 2000 Broadway revival.

McCormack is best known for his eight seasons as Will Truman on NBC's Emmy-winning "Will & Grace" that earned him a Screen Actor's Guild Award, five Golden Globe nominations, and the Emmy Award for Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He spent five seasons with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival where his roles included Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tusenbach in Three Sisters, and Orleans in Henry V. He made his Broadway debut starring as Harold Hill in The Music Man, and returned to New York for the American premiere of Neil LaBute's Some Girl(s). In 2010, he appeared in David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. His film work includes Alien Trespass, the cult film Free Enterprise and My One and Only, opposite Renne Zellweger. His upcoming films include Barricade and the political drama Knife Fight. Television credits include The Andromeda Strain (A&E), Borrowed Hearts (CBS), Trust Me (TNT), the title role in Lifetime's Who Is Clark Rockefeller?, "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and two seasons as Col. Clay Mosby on "Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years." Next year, he will be both star and a producer on the new TNT drama, Perception.

The production will also star Candice Bergen, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, John Larroquette and Michael McKean. The play will be directed by Michael Wilson.

Gore Vidal's THE BEST MAN will begin rehearsals on Monday, January 30th, 2012 with the first preview performance on Tuesday, March 6th, 2012. An official opening is set for Sunday, April 1st, 2012 at a Shubert Theatre to be announced.

Tony and Drama Desk Award winning scenic designer Derek McLane (33 Variations, Anything Goes), Tony and Drama Desk Award winning lighting designer Kenneth Posner (The Coast of Utopia, Part 2 – Shipwreck) and five-time Tony Award nominated costume designer Ann Roth (The Book of Mormon) will design the play about power, ambition, political secrets, ruthlessness and the race for the presidency.

Gore Vidal's THE BEST MAN will make its return to Broadway in its first major revival since its critically acclaimed run in 2000 which received a Tony Award nomination and won a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Play Revival.

Gore Vidal is recognized as one of our foremost authors and essayists of the last seven decades. In addition to a major sequence of novels about American history and satirical novels, Vidal has written dozens of television plays, film scripts and even three mystery novels under a pseudonym. He has also written over a hundred essays, gathered in several volumes published between 1962 and 2001. Vidal's career as an essayist culminated in 1993 when he won the National Book Award for United States: Essays, 1952-1992. His credits include the following as a Novelist: The City and the Pillar, Burr, 1876, Lincoln, Hollywood, The Golden Age, The Judgment of Paris, Messiah, Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckinridge and Duluth. Essayist: United States. Memoirist: Screening History, Palimpsest. Playwright: Visit to a Small Planet, Romulus, Weekend, An Evening with Richard Nixon. Screenwriter: Suddenly, Last Summer, The Best Man, Is Paris Burning? Film actor: Gattaca, Bob Roberts. Vidal is also a Congressional Candidate both in New York and California.

Michael Wilson was recently represented by Horton Foote's critically acclaimed three part, nine hour The Orphans' Home Cycle, for which Wilson received a Drama Desk as well as the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Director of a Play. On Broadway, he has directed Foote's Dividing the Estate (Tony Award nom, Best Play), and Matthew Barber's Enchanted April (Tony Award nom, Best Play) as well as John Van Druten's Old Acquaintance for Roundabout Theatre Company. His Off-Broadway credits include the premieres of Christopher Shinn's What Didn't Happen (Playwrights Horizons), Tina Howe's Chasing Manet (Primary Stages), and Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets as well as the New York premieres of Foote's The Carpetbagger's Children (Lincoln Center Theatre) and The Day Emily Married, Jane Anderson's Defying Gravity and Tennessee Williams' The Red Devil Battery Sign. Regional work includes plays at Alley Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, New York Stage & Film, Philadelphia Theatre Company, and Hartford Stage where he was Artistic Director from 1998 to 2011. He was represented last season by the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival of Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore starring Olympia Dukakis and the premiere of Christopher Shinn's Picked at The Vineyard Theatre.