Jake Gyllenhaal is ready for his next stage role, just as Broadway is ready for a brand new theater. The actor will star in the first-ever Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s acclaimed play, Burn This, producers Stacey Mindich and Jessica R. Jenen have announced.
Tony Award winner Michael Mayer (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, American Idiot) will direct the revival, thirty years after the play first premiered.
Performances are set to begin in February, ahead of its opening night on March 6. Set in downtown New York in the gritty 1980s, the complex, humorous play explores the spiritual and emotional isolation of Pale and Anna, two iconoclasts who are brought together in the wake of a life-changing event.
Gyllenhaal made his Broadway debut in the 2015 two-hander Constellations, opposite Ruth Wilson. This October, he will give a concert performance of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George at New York City Center’s annual gala.
Additional casting for Burn This is to be announced. The drama was first staged in New York in 1987 with Joan Allen and John Malkovich, in a production that transferred to Broadway, winning Allen a Tony for best actress. A 2002 off-Broadway revival featured Edward Norton, Catherine Keener, Ty Burrell and Dallas Roberts.
