The show will go on.
Dustin Hoffman will return to the stage next year in his first Broadway role in more than 30 years, starring as the stage manager in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” Deadline reported Tuesday.
Though the Oscar winner, 82, last appeared on the Great White Way as Shylock in 1989’s “The Merchant of Venice” — and earned a Tony nomination in the process — he’s no stranger to the stage.
Hoffman played the role of Willy Loman in the 1984 revival of “Death of Salesman” and reprised the role the following year in a TV film, for which he took home an Emmy.
The stage manager part will mark “The Graduate” star’s first role in any medium since last year’s Italian thriller, “L’uomo del labirinto” (“Into the Labyrinth”) and more notably, in Noah Baumbach’s 2017 Netflix film, “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).”
News of Hoffman’s casting comes on the heels of The Broadway League’s announcement Monday that Broadway performances would not resume until early 2021, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Scott Rudin — who took home a Tony for his revivals of, among others, “Fences,” “Death of a Salesman” and “A Raisin in the Sun” — will produce.
Bartlett Sher will direct, and the project will see him reunite with Rudin, who produced Sher’s 2018 stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Sher scored a Tony nomination for directing that production.
Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Our Town” takes place between 1901 and 1913 and centers on the lives of those who live in the fictional American town of Grover’s Corners.