Theater News

Nick Offerman Will Star in World-Premiere Stage Adaptation of A Confederacy of Dunces

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel will make its stage debut at the Huntington Theatre Company.

Nick Offerman will star as Ignatius J. Reilly in the world premiere of A Confederacy of Dunces at the Huntington Theatre Company.
Nick Offerman will star as Ignatius J. Reilly in the world premiere of A Confederacy of Dunces at the Huntington Theatre Company.
(© David Gordon)

The Huntington Theatre Company will present the world-premiere stage adaptation of John Kennedy Toole's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces, starring Nick Offerman of NBC’s Parks and Recreation. Performances will run from November 11-December 13, at the Huntington’s mainstage, the BU Theatre.

Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by David Esbjornson, A Confederacy of Dunces follows the larger-than-life character Ignatius J. Reilly (Offerman) — an overweight, arrogant, eccentric man living in his mother’s New Orleans home in the 1960s. Called the Don Quixote of the French Quarter, his farcical odyssey includes visits to a department store and a strip club, and stints working at a pants factory and as a hot dog vendor.

"A Confederacy of Dunces is an iconic novel with an incredible cult following," says Huntington Artistic Director Peter DuBois. "It’s a privilege to work with playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, the very funny Nick Offerman, and our friend director David Esbjornson, and to be the first to share this exciting new play with Boston audiences."

"Adapting John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces into a play has been like wrestling Ignatius Reilly to the stage," adds adapter Jeffrey Hatcher. "The book is famously a picaresque, episodic and digressive, but the digressions are often the point. What I think we've arrived at is a play that focuses on the characters – Ignatius, his mother Mrs. Reilly, Burma Jones, Myrna Minkoff – without losing any of the book's color and atmosphere and humor."

For tickets and more information, click here.

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