Graceland Heads East

Ellen Fairey's Graceland, which opened in May and is now set to run through November 15th, is set to move to New York.

The play opened at Profiles Theatre in May and has been extended four times, moving just down the street to the National Pastime Theatre. More information on that run here. (By the way, check out the "reviews" tab there, and compare their quote to my actual review. None of the words change, but the tone sure is different when you add exclamation points.)

According to Playbill, the play will be staged Off-Broadway at the Duke Theatre as part of Lincoln Center Theatre's LCT3 program, devoted to smaller-scale productions of emerging works. It is set to run May 3-29, with an official opening the 17th of that month. No casting announcement has been made, but given that it is to be directed by Henry Wishcamper (who has done some work in Chicago, most recently the Goodman's Animal Crackers), rather than Profiles' Matt Miller, it's a fair bet that the cast will be all New Yorkers.

A huge congratulations to Fairey and everyone at Profiles on the continued success of the play. I'm still a bit mystified--I thought the play had great dialogue and interesting characters, but  found some of the behavior inexplicable and the plot in general pretty predictable, though the strong acting and direction helped a lot. Still, it's never bad when a show strikes a chord, and I hope that Graceland goes on to more success--and Fairey's next play is even better.