Patrick Page, Tonya Pinkins, Chike Johnson, Ashley Williams & More Join A TIME TO KILL on Broadway

Producers Daryl Roth and Eva Price announced today that Patrick Page, Tony Award winner Tonya Pinkins, Chike Johnson, and Ashley Williams plus Dashiell Eaves, J.R. Horne, John Procaccino, Tijuana Ricks, and Lee Sellarswill join the previously announced Sebastian Arcelus, Fred Dalton Thompson, and John Douglas Thompson in the new Broadway courtroom drama A Time To Kill, Tony Award-winning playwright Rupert Holmes' stage adaptation of John Grisham's best-selling novel. This new Broadway play holds the distinction of being the first-ever John Grisham property to be adapted for the stage. A Time To Kill is set to open on Broadway on October 20, 2013 at the John Golden Theatre (252 West 45th Street). Previews begin September 28th. Ethan McSweeny will direct. Final casting will be announced shortly. Tickets will go on sale to the general public on July 26th at Telecharge.com (212-239-6200) or by visiting www.ATimeToKillOnBroadway.com.

"There is a great tradition of courtroom dramas in American literature and I'm thrilled to be a part of the Broadway premiere of a new addition to the genre," said director Ethan McSweeny in a statement. "We have assembled a superb cast of actors with enormous depth to their careers each of whom will contribute something special to bringing to life the vivid tapestry of John Grisham's Mississippi and Rupert Holmes' gripping adaptation for the stage."

The casting breakdown is as follows: Sebastian Arcelus as Jake Brigance; Dashiell Eaves as Pete Willard/DR Musgrove; J.R. Horne as Mr. Pate; Chike Johnson as Ozzie Walls, Patrick Page as Rufus Buckley; Tonya Pinkins as Gwen Hailey; John Procaccino as Drew Tyndale/WT Bass; Tijuana Ricks as Court Reporter; Lee Sellars as Cobb/Rhodeheaver/Grist; Fred Dalton Thompson as Judge Noose; John Douglas Thompson as Carl Lee Hailey; and Ashley Williams as Ellen Roark. Biographical information for the above is provided below.

A Time to Kill, the popular courtroom drama, tells the emotionally charged, now-iconic story of a young, idealistic lawyer, Jake Brigance, defending a black man, Carl Lee Hailey, for taking the law into his own hands following an unspeakable crime committed against his young daughter. Their small Mississippi town is thrown into upheaval, and Jake finds himself arguing against the formidable district attorney, Rufus Buckley, and under attack from both sides of a racially divided city. This drama is a thrilling courtroom battle where the true nature of what is right and what is moral are called into question.

The design team for A Time To Kill features scenic design by James Noone, costume design by Tony Award nominee David Woolard, lighting design by Tony Award winner Jeff Croiter, original music and sound design by Lindsay Jones, and projection design by Jeff Sugg.

John Grisham is one of the best-selling authors of all time, having written some of the most popular legal thrillers in the history of publishing, beginning in 1988 with A Time To Kill. Since then, he has written a novel a year, amassing 275 million books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 40 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time To Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, Grisham was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi, law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby-writing his first novel. Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn't have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.

The multihyphenate Rupert Holmes has made his mark across various mediums, as playwright, composer, orchestrator, songwriter, mystery writer, and television writer. He won the 1986 Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Score for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which in 2013 received an acclaimed, Tony-nominated revival at the Roundabout. Drood also represents one of two prestigious Edgar Awards for Holmes, who also won this foremost honor for mystery writing for his Broadway play Accomplice. He also received Tony nominations for 2003 Best Play forSay Goodnight Gracie and 2007 Best Book of a Musical and Best Score for Kander & Ebb's Curtains. An accomplished mystery writer, his first novel Where the Truth Lies (Nero Wolfe nominee, Best American Mystery Novel) was adapted for the cinema by renowned filmmaker Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), and stars Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. He has also written the best-selling mystery Swing and the upcoming crime series for Simon & Schuster, The McMasters Guide to Homicide. His other stage credits include Broadway's Solitary Confinement; the Washington, D.C. staging of A Time To Kill at Arena Stage; The Nutty Professor at TPAC; Robin and the 7 Hoods at The Old Globe; and Marty at Huntington. For television, he created, wrote and scored AMC's original series "Remember WENN."

Director Ethan McSweeny made his mark on New York with his breakout 1998 production of John Logan's Never the Sinner, which won Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, followed by his Broadway debut with the revival of Gore Vidal's The Best Man, which received a 2001 Tony Award nomination for Best Revival of a Play. His other notable New York credits include the premieres of Kate Fodor's Rx (Primary Stages) and 100 Saints You Should Know (Playwrights Horizons), and Jason Grote's 1001 (P73). His career has spanned a remarkably diverse body of work that includes more than 60 productions, from world premieres (1001, 100 Saints, and Trinity River Plays among others), to noted productions of classics (from Aeschylus' The Persians to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice), to revivals from the American canon (including Miller's A View from the Bridge, Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Williams' The Glass Menagerie) to musicals both new and old (Adam Gwon's Ordinary Days, and the upcoming Pirates of Penzance). Mr. McSweeny directed an earlier version of A Time To Kill at Arena Stage. He has directed on many of the nation's most prestigious stages including the Guthrie, the Goodman, The Old Globe, the Shakespeare Theatre, the Denver Center, the Alley, Dallas Theater Center, South Coast Rep, CenterStage, Pittsburgh Public, George Street Playhouse, San Jose Rep, Westport Playhouse, the Wilma, Primary Stages, Playwrights Horizons, and the National Actors Theatre, among others.