Robin Wright and Richard Schiff to Star in Broadway Revival of Talley's Folly

Robin Wright and Richard Schiff are set to star in the first-ever Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly. The new production will be directed by longtime Wilson collaborator Marshall W. Mason, who directed the world premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play in 1980. It is on track to open in the spring of 2011, with exact dates and a theater still to be announced.

Talley’s Folly is a two-character comedy that unfolds on the fourth of July near the end of World War II in the romantic setting of a moonlit boat house in rural Missouri. Sally Talley (Wright) is the daughter of a prominent local family who is being courted by an unlikely suitor, Matt Friedman (Schiff), a Jewish accountant from St. Louis. Both are rebels against the conventions of the turbulent times, and finding each other may be their only chance for happiness.

Three-time Screen Actors Guild Award nominee and Golden Globe nominee Wright is best known for her film roles in Forrest Gump, The Princess Bride, Hurlyburly, Breaking and Entering, The Pledge, Beowulf, Message in a Bottle, The Singing Detective, White Oleander, Unbreakable, Moll Flanders, Toys , the recent State of Play and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.

Emmy Award winner Richard Schiff is best known for playing Toby Zeigler on TV’s The West Wing. He has appeared in over 50 films, including The Lost World: Jurassic Park. He was most recently seen on stage in New York in The Exonerated and in London’s West End in Underneath the Lintel.

Both actors will be making their Broadway debuts in Talley’s Folly.

The production will feature scenic design by John Lee Beatty and costume design by Jennifer von Mayrhauser (who both worked on the original production of Talley’s Folly) as well as lighting design by Phil Monat.

Talley’s Folly had its Broadway Premiere on February 14, 1980, following a 1979 off-Broadway production under the auspices of the Circle Repertory Company. Mason directed a cast that starred Judd Hirsch and Trish Hawkins at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where it ran for 286 performances and won both the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1979-80 New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.

The Broadway revival is being produced by Phil Monat, T. Richard Fitzgerald and Randall L. Wreghitt.