Theater News

Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy Set for Broadway Revival of Inherit the Wind

Christopher Plummer, Brian Dennehy
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)
Christopher Plummer, Brian Dennehy
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)

Tony Award winners Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy will star in a Broadway revival of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s classic drama Inherit the Wind that is scheduled to begin a 12-week engagement at the Lyceum Theatre in March 2007. The production will be directed by Doug Hughes, a Tony-winner for Doubt, and will have sets and costumes by Tony-winner Santo Loquasto. Additional cast and creative team will be announced at a later date.

The play is a fictionalized retelling of the famed 1925 trial in which a Tennessee science teacher named John Scopes was convicted of teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. The lawyers in the case were William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow; Dennehy will play the Bryan-like role of Matthew Harrison Brady, and Plummer will play the Darrow-like role of Henry Drummomd.

Inherit the Wind has been seen twice before on Broadway; in 1955, with Paul Muni and Ed Begley, and in a short-lived 1996 revival starring George C. Scott and Charles Durning. The 1960 film version stars Spencer Tracy and Frederich March. There have also been three television adaptations of the play, among them a 1988 version with Jason Robards and Kirk Douglas.

Plummer’s Broadway credits include Cyrano, The Royal Hunt of the Sun, The Good Doctor, No Man’s Land, and King Lear, while Dennehy has been seen on Broadway in such plays as Death of a Salesman, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and Translations.