MR. BURNS Original Cast and Director to Reunite for 10th Anniversary Benefit Readings

Playwrights Horizons will present a benefit concert reading of Anne Washburn’s Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, reuniting the New York premiere production’s full original cast with director Steve Cosson, and featuring music by the late Michael Friedman. Washburn’s imaginative dark comedy traces the resilience of Bart Simpson through the ages—from beloved TV character to epic hero of a pandemic-desolated world. Mr Burns was originally commissioned by The Civilians, New York, NY (Steven Cosson, Artistic Director). 

In the aftermath of a pandemic, the electric grid has failed, triggering a nuclear cataclysm. In Washburn’s vision of a post-apocalyptic society that needs rebuilding, the pop culture of one era evolves into the mythology of another. The foundational text of this new civilization’s epic lore: “Cape Feare,” an episode of The Simpsons parodying Martin Scorsese’s 1991 film Cape Fear, itself a remake of the 1962 film of the same name, adapted from a 1957 novel. 

The cast includes Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Playwrights: Far From Heaven; Broadway: Doubt; Off-Broadway: Marys Seacole, Ruined) as Quincy, Susannah Flood (Upcoming at Playwrights: Staff Meal; Broadway: Birthday Candles; Off-Broadway: The Comeuppance, The Effect) as Maria, Gibson Frazier (Playwrights: Regretfully, So the Birds Are; Off-Broadway: Tumacho, Small Mouth Sounds, The Internationalist) as Gibson, Matthew Maher (Playwrights: The Flick, The World Over; Broadway: King Lear; Off-Broadway: Three Sisters) as Matt, Nedra Marie Taylor (Playwrights: A Life; Broadway: Book of Mormon, Marvin’s Room; Off-Broadway: The House that Will Not Stand) as Choragos, Jennifer R. Morris (Off-Broadway: The Lucky Ones, Gone Missing, [sic]; founding member of The Civilians) as Jenny, Colleen Werthmann (Playwrights: Miss Witherspoon, Recent Tragic Events; Off-Broadway: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Gone Missing) as Colleen, and Sam Breslin Wright (Playwrights: The Trees; Broadway: Macbeth; Off-Broadway: The Temperamentals, Coop) as Sam. Kris Kukul (Playwrights: Orchestrator of Teeth; Broadway: Beetlejuice The Musical) serves as Music Director. 

“When was the last time you met a new play that was so smart it made your head spin? Not in years, huh? Well, get ready to reel, New York,” Ben Brantley said, in his Critic’s Pick New York Times review, of the “downright brilliant” play upon its debut at Playwrights Horizons. He added, “It’s easy to forget how good the acting is here because it doesn’t feel like acting, except when the characters are putting on a show, and then we’re always aware of the real people beneath the disguises.” In a five-star review of the production in Time Out, David Cote praised the “top-notch cast” and the “steely grace” of Cosson’s staging. He called the play “a startlingly emotional epic of the human ability to survive horror—and eventually turn it into art,” transmuting “the cartoon absurdity of The Simpsons…into something ancient and tragic.” 

The conception of Mr. Burns mirrors the first act of the play, in which a group of pandemic- survivors—who will eventually unite as a Simpsons-performing theater troupe—sit around a campfire recalling an indelible episode. “I was really interested in taking a TV show and pushing it forward past the apocalypse and seeing what would happen to it,” Washburn recalled in a video for Playwrights Horizons. “I don’t remember how I hit upon The Simpsons; it was a really casual decision. I was thinking, oh, Friends or Cheers or Seinfeld, any show that had been popular enough so that people would have a huge affection for it and have a lot of memory of it. It turned out to be a really useful decision: People really remember [The Simpsons], and they really enjoy remembering it and quoting it.” 

Washburn teamed with The Civilians founder, director Steve Cosson, and gathered a group of actors in a disused bank vault below Wall Street—incidentally, much like the post-electric world her play would take place in, with no cell service—to recollect Simpsons episodes. There, the actors (all Civilians Associate Artists—as were Washburn, Friedman, and the performers that ultimately comprised the cast for the Playwrights production) collectively revealed they had the most vivid memories of “Cape Feare.” Washburn transcribed their reflections, using verbatim language from the gathering to form the centerpiece of the play’s first act (certain actors from the original cast also play characters of the same name). Years later, she told Vox, “It felt quite perfect in many ways. It’s deeply referential, but it’s also just such a deeply primitive story: It’s a family on a river, with a killer. So it’s horrifying in that way, and also in a post-apocalyptic time of poor societal control, it would really feel right.”

Noting the play’s prescience, Playwrights Horizons Artistic Director Adam Greenfield recalled receiving a text from Associate Artistic Director Natasha Sinha earlier in the pandemic—a photo of her and her friends around a campfire, saying they were “Mr. Burns-ing right now.” He says, “A decade ago, the opening premise of Mr. Burns was shocking, a nightmarish alternate reality in which our world would suddenly collapse and face loss in unimaginable numbers. Today, we've lived a version of this nightmare.  As we continue building our lives back from the Covid years, and as we witness the painful, halting miracle of live theater's rebirth, the play carries so many new resonances and unexpected truths. Considering that Anne Washburn's play has at this point been produced in cities all over the globe, and that our world has collectively experienced a massive Mr. Burns in real life, this is a ten-year anniversary to mark."

​​Schedule & Tickets

Concert readings of Mr. Burns take place June 1 & 2 on the Mainstage at Playwrights Horizons.

Tickets are $125, with a discounted $50 ticket available for Playwrights Horizons Flex Pass holders, Patrons and Generation PH Members. For the Saturday, June 1, reading there will also be a limited number of $250 tickets available that come with an invitation to a special post-show reception with Anne Washburn, Steve Cosson, and the company. 

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