Two-time Tony Award winner Matthew Broderick, perhaps best known for playing Leo Bloom in The Producers, will make his West End debut in a new production of Kenneth Lonergan’s play The Starry Messenger.
Matthew will co-star with Oscar nominee Elizabeth McGovern in the production, which begins performances at Wyndham’s Theatre on 16 May.
The Starry Messenger is a bittersweet drama set in 1990s New York, where an astronomer at the city’s planetarium, Mark Williams (a role reprised by Matthew from the play’s 2009 Off-Broadway run), is locked in a mid-life crisis. Feeling a closer connection to the infinite starry sky than to his job, or even marriage, a chance meeting with single young mother Angela may just offer him a quantum of faith in the universe.
Matthew is also well known for portraying Ferris Bueller in the beloved movie, David Lightman in WarGames, and John Brown in Inspector Gadget. He also provided the voice of adult Simba in The Lion King, and remains the youngest winner of the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play (for Brighton Beach Memoirs in 1983).
Elizabeth, meanwhile, is best known for playing Lady Cora in hit TV series Downton Abbey, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe. She has also recently performed in Sunset At The Villa Thalia at the National Theatre, and The Misanthrope at the Young Vic.
The Starry Messenger, directed by Sam Yates (Glengarry Glen Ross), will play a strictly limited 13-week season between Thursday 16 May and Saturday 10 August. Tickets are available via the show website.