Theater News

F. Murray Abraham To Star in TFNA’s The Merchant of Venice and The Jew of Malta

| New York City |

August 28, 2006

F. Murray Abraham
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)
F. Murray Abraham
(© Joseph Marzullo/Retna)

Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham will play Shylock in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, to be directed by Darko Tresnjak, and Barabas in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, to be directed by David Herskovits. The plays are part of Theatre for a New Audience’s 28th season and will be presented in rotating repertory. Merchant will begin previews January 6, while Malta will begin performances January 17; both are scheduled to open on the same date, February 4, at The Duke on 42nd Street.

Abraham has acted in over 80 films and 90 plays. His Broadway credits include The Man in the Glass Booth, 6 Rms Riv Vu, The Ritz, Angels in America, A Month in the Country, and Triumph of Love. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1984 film version of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, for which he also received a Golden Globe and a Los Angeles Film Critics Award. Other film credits include Star Trek: Insurrection, Children of the Revolution, Mighty Aphrodite, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Scarface and The Name of the Rose.

For both productions, Tony Award-winner John Lee Beatty will design the sets and David Weiner the lighting. Linda Cho will design the costumes for The Merchant of Venice and David Zinn will design the costumes for The Jew of Malta.

Following these two repertory plays, TFNA will present Oliver Twist, based on the classic novel by Charles Dickens as adapted and directed by Neil Bartlett. The production will begin previews March 29, with an opening set for April 1 at The Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College.

For more information, visit www.tfana.org.

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