Cast and Creative Team

Mr. Collins is delighted to be making his Long Wharf debut. Broadway: The Royal Family, To Be or Not To Be, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, An Ideal Husband, and The Homecoming. Off-Broadway: Aristocrats, Orson’s Shadow, House and Garden.  Regional highlights:  The Autumn Garden, Dissonance (Williamstown), The Real Thing, In This Corner, Dinner with Friends , Spinning Into Butter, Hedda Gabler, Indian Ink, The Ruling Class, Macbeth, Inexpressible Island, Cakewalk.  Film: Wanted, Joshua, Milia.  Television: "Law & Order" (All versions) "All My Children" "The Guiding Light" “One Live to Live.” Rufus studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Ms. Knight made her Broadway debut in 1964 in the Lee Strasberg production of The Three Sisters. Since then she has done more than fifty plays on and off-Broadway, in regional theatre, and in England. Her resume includes Romeo and Juliet, The Cherry Orchard, Antigone, Kennedy's Children, The Young Man from Atlanta, Losing Time, Economic Necessity, Absent Forever, The Landscape of the Body, Come Back Little Sheba, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Necessary Targets, A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, Blithe Spirit, The Importance of being Earnest, A Touch of the Poet and others. Her 2009 -2010 theatre appearances include Come Back Come Back, Wherever You Are (written and directed by Arthur Laurents,) Love, Loss, and What I Wore, and Swimming Upstream. Ms. Knight has won several awards including the Tony with two nominations, two Drama Desk nominations, two Academy Award nominations, three Emmy's with ten nominations, two Golden Globes with three nominations, the Venice Film Festival Best Actress award and others. Film work includes The Dark At The Top of The Stairs, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Group, Petulia, The Rain People, As Good As it Gets, The Divine Secrets of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Private lives of Pippa Lee, and others. Television work includes Ingmar Bergman's “The Lie,” “The Country Girl,” “Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” “Playing for Time,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Thirtysomething,” and others. Ms. Knight will be seen in the films My Idiot Brother and Elevator in 2011. For complete resume www.shirleyknight.net

Broadway: Mary Stuart, The Rivals, The Crucible (Tony nom.), Uncle Vanya (Drama Desk nom.), Twelfth Night, The Little Foxes (Drama Desk Award, Tony nom.), Racing Demon, A Small Family Business (Drama Desk nom.), Noises Off (Drama Desk Award), Black Comedy, Sleuth, Da, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tony nom.) Off Broadway: Me, Myself And I, Keep Your Pantheon, Gaslight, Colder Than Here, Much Ado About Nothing, Beckett/Albee, Scattergood, Hobson’s Choice, The Play About the Baby (Obie Award), Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Entertainer, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Misalliance, Molly Sweeney, Travels with My Aunt (Drama Desk, OCC awards), Mud River Stone, Ashes (Obie), Spread Eagle, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing and The Butterfly Collection. Regional: The world premieres of Edward Albee’s Me, Myself and I and A Seagull In The Hamptons at the McCarter and Alfred Uhry’s Edgardo Mine at Hartford Stage and The Guthrie. As director (Broadway): The Circle, Blithe Spirit, Hay Fever, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Show Off, The Waltz of the Toreadors. Film/TV: Bob Roberts, City Hall, Treasure Planet (voice of John Silver), “Dolley Madison,” “The Investigation,” “Liberty,” “Hamlet,” “Twelfth Night.” Recipient: 1998 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence, 1998 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work, Fox Foundation Fellow.

Off-Broadway: The Language Archive (The Roundabout Theatre Company) Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons; Theatre World Award, OBIE and Drama Desk for ensemble), Drum of the Waves of Horikawa (Two-Headed Calf at HERE, Obie Award); The Happy Sad (SPF); Open House (The Foundry); Amazons and Their Men (Clubbed Thumb); Women of Trachis (Target Margin); The Internationalist (13P); and Demon Baby (Clubbed Thumb). Regional Credits include In the Wake (Center Theatre Group; Berkeley Repertory Theatre) and roles at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Empty Space, ACT, New York Stage and Film, Sundance Theatre Lab, On the Boards, and Printer's Devil Theatre. Film includes Hedda Gabler and Perfidia. She is an affiliated artist with New Georges and Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf and featured in both Time Out New York and The Village Voice as one of New York’s favorite actors.  Heidi is also a writer, and her latest play There Are No More Big Secrets is in performances now off-Broadway at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in NYC.

Mr. Waterston returns to Long Wharf Theatre, having previously performed in Have You Seen Us? and Travesties. His portrayal of charismatic, tough District Attorney Jack McCoy, in Wolf Films/Universal Network Television’s "Law & Order," has earned three Emmy nominations for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series, the 1999 Screen Actors Guild Award, a Screen Actors Guild nomination in 1998 and a Golden Globe nomination in 1995. Waterston received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for The Killing Fields, three Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe Award for I’ll Fly Away, and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Most Promising Newcomer for the “Nick Carraway” role in The Great Gatsby.  He was awarded an Emmy as host of the ten-part NBC informational series "Lost Civilizations," and, in England, has received numerous BAFTA nominations. Waterston’s extensive film credits include Woody Allen’s films Interiors, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors, John Waters’ Serial Mom, Hopscotch and Heaven’s Gate and two Anthony Harvey films; Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie with Katharine Hepburn, Michael Moriarty, and Joanna Miles and Eagles Wing with Martin Sheen and Harvey Keitel.  He starred opposite Jeff Bridges in Tom McGuane’s Rancho Deluxe and with Reese Witherspoon in Man in the Moon. On television, he played “Oppenheimer” in mini-series of the same name, produced and starred opposite Jennifer Beals and Lisa Gay Hamilton in the cable movie A House Divided, and portrayed Abraham Lincoln opposite Mary Tyler Moore in Gore Vidal's television mini-series, "Lincoln."  Waterston starred in the NBC movie, The Matthew Shepard Story, opposite Stockard Channing and his recent films include The Commission with Martin Landau and Le Divorce with Kate Hudson, Glenn Close and Stockard Channing. Waterston earned a Tony Award nomination as Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois at the Lincoln Center Theater in New York, and an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award for his “Benedick” in Much Ado About Nothing. His stage work includes the New York Shakespeare Festival, productions As You Like It, Cymbeline, Measure for Measure and Hamlet.  Waterston is a graduate of Yale University and currently serves on the board of Oceana, the world’s preeminent ocean conservation organization. Waterston lives in Connecticut with his wife.  Their children James, Elisabeth, and Katherine, are a new generation of ever more successful actors, playing important roles on stage in New York, as well as on film and television.  Their son Graham is a writer and director.  They have two grandchildren.

Playwright, diarist and novelist Simon Gray was born on Hayling Island on 21st October 1936. His first novel, Colmain, was published in 1963. He was the author of many plays for TV and radio, as well as films, including the 1987 adaptation of J L Carr’s A  Month in the Country, and TV films such as Old Flames, After Pilkington  and Unnatural Pursuits. He wrote more than 30 stage plays, among them Butley, Otherwise Engaged, Close of Play, The Rear Column,  Quartermaine’s Terms, The Common Pursuit, Hidden Laughter, The Late Middle Classes, Japes, and Little Nell, which premiered at the Theatre Royal, Bath in 2007, directed by Peter Hall. In 1990 he was given the BAFTA Writer’s Award. 

His acclaimed works of non-fiction include The Smoking Diaries trilogy and Coda. The dramatisation of his diaries, The Last Cigarette, co-authored with Hugh Whitemore and directed by Richard Eyre, played in the West End in spring/summer 2009. Simon Gray was appointed CBE in the 2005 New Year's Honours for his services to drama and literature. He died on August 7th 2008.

Mr. Rudman is an American who has worked mainly in Britain, where he has been director and/or artistic director of five theatres: the Traverse, Hampstead Theatre, the Lyttleton at the National Theatre, the Chichester Festival Theatre and the Crucible in Sheffield. He has directed many plays at the National Theatre and in the West End. While he was artistic director of the Hampstead the theatre won the Evening Standard award for outstanding achievement. In America he has directed three plays on Broadway, one of which, The Changing Room, originated at Long Wharf Theatre. His production of Death of a Salesman at the Broadhurst Theatre won the Tony Award for best revival. In 1976 he directed Sam Waterston as Hamlet at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park and at the Vivien Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center. In 1993 he directed Measure for Measure at the Delacorte.

Long Wharf Theatre Debut. Broadway: Present Laughter (2010 Tony Nomination), Old Acquaintance, Butley, Hedda Gabler. Off Broadway: Trust, The Water’s Edge (Second Stage); The Understudy (Roundabout); Paris Commune, Measure for Pleasure (Public Theater); Observe the Sons of Ulster (Lucille Lortel Award), Chaucer in Rome (Lincoln Center); Antony and Cleopatra (TFANA); Force Continuum, Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Atlantic Theater Company). Regional: Alley Theatre, Arena Stage, Centerstage, Chicago Shakespeare, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre, Geffen Playhouse, Guthrie Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Mark Taper Forum, Old Globe, Shakespeare D.C., Triad Stage, Westport Country Playhouse, Yale Repertory Theatre. International: The Gate-Dublin, Stratford Festival Canada.  Opera: Il Trittico (Deutsche Oper Berlin), Der Waffenschmied (Gärtnerplatztheater Munich), Der fliegende Holländer (Würzburg), Lohengrin (Budapest). Elliot Norton and IRNE Award winner. Education: Yale School of Drama.

TONI-LESLIE JAMES

COSTUME DESIGN

 

Previously for Long Wharf Theatre: The Philanthropist, The Times. Broadway: Over 40 plays and musicals including the current revivals of Anything Goes, That Championship Season and Driving Miss Daisy. Other Broadway work includes Time Stands Still, A View From The Bridge, Waiting for Godot, Young Frankenstein, Is He Dead?, Curtains, Grey Gardens, The Pajama Game, The Producers, Contact, Kiss Me Kate, Steel Pier. Recent Off-Broadway, the Brother/Sister Plays, Ruined, Twelfth Night in Central Park, Wig Out!. He has designed for most leading resident and regional theatre companies in the U.S. including Lincoln Center, MTC, Roundabout, Encores!, The Public, The Guthrie, The Goodman, Seattle Rep, Intiman, La Jolla, Old Globe, South Coast, CTG. Opera: The Met, NYCO, San Francisco, Houston Grand, L.A Music Center, Seattle, Santa Fe, St. Louis. Abroad: Royal Opera Covent Garden, Scottish Opera, Opera/North, Bonn, La Fenice, Maggio Florence, L’Arena di Verona, Cagliari, Lisbon.  Recipient of the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Dramalogue and Hewes design awards.

Long Wharf Theatre: The Train Driver, The Old Man and the Sea, The Blue Album, Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, How Do You Like Your Meat, others, Broadway: Music and sound design for Next Fall, Proof, Sight Unseen, Dividing the Estate, Prelude to a Kiss, A Bronx Tale, Well. Rabbit Hole, A Streetcar Named Desire, Twelve Angry Men, Sixteen Wounded, The Retreat from Moscow, Enchanted April, Summer and Smoke, Twilight LA,  A Few Good Men, more. Gromada has composed many scores for Hartford Stage productions, including Horton Foote's epic Orphans' Home Cycle, and Michael Wilson's A Christmas Carol  Other NY: The Screwtape Letters, Shipwrecked, Clybourne Park, The Grand Manner, Streamers, Buffalo Gal,  Some Americans Abroad,  Pig Farm,  Bach at Leipzig, Oedipus at Palm Springs, Small Tragedy,  many others.  Public Theater: The Singing Forest,  Henry V, Julius Caesar,  The Skriker, Machinal,  more.  Regional: over 200 productions.  Television: "The Interrogators" (Biography) Awards:  Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel. Henry Hewes, Obie, Eddy, Drama-logue, NEA Opera/Music Theatre Fellowship, ASCAP awards. Visit www.johngromada.com