Kelli O'Hara to Star in New FAR FROM HEAVEN Musical at Williamstown Theatre Festival This Summer

As BroadwayWorld has previously reported, 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 the Spring 2013 following an engagement at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer.  

A spokesperson for Williamstown has confirmed to BroadwayWorld today that Kelli O'Hara will be the show's leading lady, Cathy Whitaker, for the shows first engagement at the Festival. The role was originated by Julianne Moore in the Focus Features/Vulcan Productions' eponymous 2002 film, written and directed by Todd Haynes.   Michael Grief (Rent, Grey Gardens, Next to Normal, Angels in America revival) directs.

Far From Heaven will premiere on the Williamstown mainstage on July 19 and run through July 29, 2012.

O'Hara has been nominated for three Tony Awards for The Light in the Piazza, The Pajama Game, and, most recently, for South Pacific. She was recently seen as Dot/Marie in the L.A. Reprise! concert staging of Sunday in the Park with George and onstage at The Public Theater in King Lear. She will next appear on Broadway this spring alongside Matthew Broderick in Nice Work If You Can Get It.

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.

For more information on the Williamstown season, visit www.wtfestival.org.