Nicole Kidman to Fly Back to Broadway in Sweet Bird of Youth

Oscar winner Nicole Kidman will return to Broadway to star in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, reports The New York Post. David Cromer, who had a hit off-Broadway with Our Town and has been attached to upcoming productions of Yank! and Picnic, will direct the play, which is slated to open next fall. The revival will be produced by Scott Rudin, who has worked with Kidman on The Blue Room, the 1998 David Hare Broadway play in which Kidman debuted—and famously got naked—as well as her Oscar-winning turn in The Hours.

There is no word on who will star opposite Kidman as Chance Wayne, a guilt-ridden young man who, in the attempt to try to establish his own acting career, becomes the companion of an aging movie star who calls herself Princess Kosmonopolis (Kidman). The play first opened on Broadway in 1959 with Paul Newman as Wayne and Geraldine Page as Kosmonopolis. The only revival on the Great White Way was a 1975 production, starring Irene Worth and Christopher Walken.

Kidman’s many film credits include Far and Away, Moulin Rouge!, Cold Mountain, The Golden Compass, The Stepford Wives, Bewitched, Batman Forever, Margot at the Wedding, Australia, and the recent film adaptation of the Broadway musical Nine. Her most recent movie is Rabbit Hole, based on David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning play and directed by John Cameron Mitchell, which just opened at the Toronto Film Festival.