Will Laura Benanti and Sterling K. Brown Square Off In ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST On Broadway?

According to Variety, three-time Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown and Tony Award-winner Laura Benanti will star in a reading of a new Broadway-aimed production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on May 18 in New York City.

Sources tell Variety that Brown will portray psych ward rabblerouser Randle P. McMurphy with Benanti as his steely foil Nurse Ratched.

The reading will be directed by Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah, best known to New York audiences for his productions of Twelfth Night, A Comedy of Errors, and Much Ado About Nothing for The Public Theater.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest offers a look into the world of absurdities and horrors facing a group of psychiatric patients in the early 1960s, and how that world is turned upside down by petty criminal Randle P. McMurphy who has always lived by his own rules. A charming rebel, McMurphy feigns insanity to serve his short sentence in the state mental hospital rather than in prison. Little does he know that he will be waging an epic war of wills against the formidable Nurse Ratched, who rules her domain with an iron will. This great American classic powerfully portrays a preeminently sane man being pushed to the outer limits of his sanity by the arbitrary rules and regulations of an institution that sets out to crush him.

The dramatic adaptation of Ken Kesey's searing novel made its Broadway debut at the Cort Theatre in 1963 starring Kirk Douglas. The play's last Broadway outing, a 2001 revival starring Gary Sinise took home the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. The lauded film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher is the winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Ms. Benanti first took Broadway by storm at the age of 18 as Maria in The Sound of Music, and has subsequently starred in ten more Broadway shows (musicals, straight plays, comedies and dramas) including Into the Woods, Nine (opposite Antonio Banderas), Gypsy (for which she won a Tony® Award), She Loves Me, My Fair Lady, and Steve Martin's Meteor Shower opposite Amy Schumer and Keegan Michael Key. Her flourishing television and film career have included widely acclaimed appearances on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" as Melania Trump, Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Tick, Tick... Boom!" and roles on Hulu's "Life & Beth," "Inside Amy Schumer," as well as "Gossip Girl," "Younger," "Nashville," "Supergirl," and the highly anticipated second season of "The Gilded Age." In film, Benanti starred in Netflix's Worth opposite Michael Keaton, Stanley Tucci and Amy Ryan, Here Today opposite Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish, and the upcoming Sony Pictures comedy No Hard Feelings opposite Jennifer Lawrence and Matthew Broderick. Also, a book author and creator of the HBO Max special "Homeschool Musical: Class of 2020" based on her viral social media movement: #sunshinesongs, Benanti released a self-titled audio album for Sony Music Masterworks and tours the world performing solo concerts alongside highly celebrated musicians and orchestras.

‍Sterling K. Brown is a veteran of stage, film, and television. Brown starred in the television series This Is Us, for which he became the first African-American actor to win a Golden Globe in the best actor in a television drama category, as well as the first African-American actor to win a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama. Mr. Brown has also appeared on Army Wives, Supernatural, Person of Interest, Medium, and as Christopher Darden in the FX miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson: AMERICAN CRIME Story, for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. He was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for his work in the critically-acclaimed Waves, and appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Black Panther as N'Jobu.