Tony Award Winners Chuck Cooper and Brent Carver Join Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad in ROMEO & JULIET on Broadway

Tony Award-winning actor Brent Carver returns to Broadway this August, to play Friar Laurence in the new Broadway production of Shakespeare's timeless love story Romeo and Juliet, starring international film star Orlando Bloom and Tony Award nominee Condola Rashad as Shakespeare's titular star-crossed lovers. Tony Award winner Chuck Cooper also joins the cast, taking on the role of Lord Capulet, in place of the previously announced Joe Morton, who is unable to continue with the production due to scheduling conflicts with his recurring role on a television series.

As previously announced, the production will be directed by five-time Tony Award nominee David Leveaux, and also stars two-time Tony Award nominee Jayne Houdyshell as the Nurse. Romeo and Juliet opens at Broadway's Richard Rodgers Theatre on Thursday, September 19, 2013 following preview performances from Saturday, August 24, 2013.

While Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story of all time, this production will mark the first time in 36 years that the play will be produced for Broadway. This version of the classic tale will retain Shakespeare's original language but have a modern setting in which members of the contentious Montague and Capulet families will be of differing ethnicities.

One of Shakespeare's best known and most beloved plays, Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic-romances dating back over 500 years. The famous youthful lovers first appeared in Italian novella in the 1500's and gained popularity in England after being adapted and translated into English by Arthur Brooke in 1562. As described in Brooke's poem, "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" - on which Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" is based - while the Montagues and Capulets are from different "races" or "stocks" their deadly feud is not based on their race, but rather on the "grudging envy" of men of "equal state." In this new production, the members of the Montague household will be white, and the blood relatives of the Capulet family will be black. While race defines the family lineages, the original cause of the 'ancient quarrel', passed down by successive generations to their young, has been lost to time. Shakespeare's dramatization of the original poem sets the two young lovers in a context of prejudice, authoritarian parents, and a never ending cycle of 'revenge.' Against this background, the strength of their love changes the world.

"Shakespeare did not only write of his world - he imagined ours," said Leveaux. "The very improbability that two young people might, through their imaginations and their courage, change the world by overcoming the cynical tyranny of division handed down to them by their elders, is the best and happily most improbable reason I can imagine to bring this story to the Broadway stage today."

The last time Romeo and Juliet was produced on Broadway was the 1977 Circle in the Square production featuring Paul Ryan Rudd and Pamela Payton-Wright. Other notable New York productions include: The Public Theater's 2012 gala staged-reading at the Delacorte Theater starring Kevin Kline and Meryl Streep; the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2011 production at the Park Avenue Armory starring Sam Troughton and Mariah Gale; The Public Theater's 2007 Shakespeare in the Park production starring Oscar Isaac and Lauren Ambrose; the 1986 Shakespeare on Broadway for the Schools repertory production starring Geoffrey Owens and ReGina Taylor; The Old Vic Company's 1956 production at the Winter Garden Theater starring John Neville and Claire Bloom; as well as the 1940 Broadway production starring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

Further casting and additional creative team members will be announced at a later date.

TICKETS
Tickets are on sale now via Ticketmaster.com (1-800-745-3000) for performances through Sunday, November 24, 2013. In order to make this production accessible to all, 100 tickets per performance will be set aside at $20 for purchase by students and educators.