Amanda Plummer and Kevin Anderson Set for Paper Mill Playhouse’s Summer and Smoke

Amanda Plummer and Kevin Anderson will star in the upcoming Paper Mill Playhouse production of Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke, to be directed by Michael Wilson. The show will run January 10-February 11; additional casting will be announced next week.

This is a co-production with Hartford Stage, which presented the show with Plummer and Marc Kudisch earlier this fall. At the time, Kudisch was announced to star at Paper Mill as well, but Plummer was reportedly not available for this engagement due to a prior commitment to perform Shakespeare With My Father in Montreal. Since then, she has become available to do the Williams play at Paper Mill because the Montreal show has been postponed; but Kudisch had to withdraw from the Paper Mill run because he has joined the cast of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of The Apple Tree.

First seen on Broadway in 1948, Summer and Smoke concerns a Southern spinster and her failed romance with a local doctor. The piece was filmed in 1961, with Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey in the leads. A 1996 Roundabout Theatre Company revival starred Mary McDonnell and Harry Hamlin.

Plummer won a Tony Award for Agnes of God and was nominated for her work in A Taste of Honey and Pygmalion. Anderson received a Tony nomination for Death of a Salesman; his other Broadway credits include Brooklyn The Musical and Williams’ Orpheus Descending. In addition, he won the Theater World Award for the Off-Broadway production of Orphans.