David Cromer to Direct Broadway Revival of William Inge's Picnic in Fall 2010

A Broadway revival of William Inge’s Picnic, to be directed by David Cromer, is being planned for next season, according to producer Darren Bagert. The production is aiming for a fall 2010 opening at a theater to be named.

Cromer first directed Picnic in September 2008 for the Writers’ Theatre in Chicago in a production featuring local actors. The play was hailed as “one of the best performances of anything—and I mean anything, not just plays—that I've seen in my life” by Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout. Cromer has become a hot commodity in New York after acclaimed transfers of his Chicago productions of the musical Adding Machine and Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which is still running off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre. Cromer's revival of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs is set to open at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre on October 25, followed by a revival of Simon’s Broadway Bound, which will begin performances at the same theater on November 18.

Picnic originally opened in 1953, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It tells the story of what happens when a handsome young stranger arrives in a small town just in time for the Labor Day picnic. The play was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1955 and was last presented on Broadway in 1994 with Ashley Judd and Kyle Chandler in the central roles of Madge and Hal.