Theater News

Jessica Hecht to Join Laura Linney on Broadway in Summer, 1976

The new David Auburn play makes its world premiere with Manhattan Theatre Club this spring.

Hayley Levitt

Hayley Levitt

| Broadway |

November 17, 2022

Jessica Hecht will star opposite Laura Linney in the Broadway world premiere of David Auburn's Summer, 1976.
Jessica Hecht will star opposite Laura Linney in the Broadway world premiere of David Auburn's Summer, 1976.
(© Tricia Baron)

Manhattan Theatre Club has announced that Tony and Emmy nominee Jessica Hecht (The Assembled Parties, Friends) will join Tony and Academy Award nominee Laura Linney (My Name Is Lucy Barton, Ozark) in the Broadway world premiere of Summer, 1976. Written by Pulitzer Prize winner David Auburn (Proof), the play will begin performances April 4, 2023, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre ahead of an April 25 opening.

Directed by Tony winner Daniel Sullivan, the play is described as a "deeply moving, insightful piece about connection, memories, and the small moments that can change the course of our lives. Over one fateful summer, an unlikely friendship develops between Diana (Linney), a fiercely iconoclastic artist and single mom, and Alice (Hecht), a free-spirited yet naive young housewife. As the Bicentennial is celebrated across the country, these two young women in Ohio navigate motherhood, ambition, and intimacy, and help each other discover their own independence."

Summer, 1976 will be Hecht's 10th Broadway production. Some of her past roles include her Tony-nominated performance in the 2010 revival of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge, the MTC production of Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties, the 2015 revival of Fiddler on the Roof, and Roundabout Theatre's 2017 revival of Arthur Miller's The Price.

Summer, 1976 was commissioned by MTC through the Bank of America New Play Program. Production support is provided by the Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater.

The creative team for Summer, 1976 will be announced soon.

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