Nicole Ari Parker to Co-Star With Blair Underwood in Broadway Revival of A Streetcar Named Desire

Nicole Ari Parker has been tapped to play Blanche DuBois opposite previously announced star Blair Underwood as Stanley Kowalski in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. The production is scheduled to open in Spring 2012 at a theater to be announced, directed by Emily Mann, with original music by Grammy winner Terence Blanchard. Additional casting has not yet been announced.

Streetcar tells the tragic story of fragile former schoolteacher Blanche, who leaves the family plantation house and moves to New Orleans to live with her sister Stella and Stella’s animalistic husband, Stanley. She quickly gets a gritty life lesson in the seamy, steamy underbelly of 1940s life in the French Quarter. The play was last revived on Broadway in 2005 with Natasha Richardson, Amy Ryan and John C. Reilly; a 1992 Broadway production starred Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin. Cate Blanchett starred as Blanche in an Australian production that played BAM in 2009.

Parker (not to be confused with the musical actress Nicole Parker) starred in the Showtime series Soul Food, the ABC drama series The Deep End and the UPN sitcom Second Time Around (co-starring her real-life husband, Boris Kodjoe). Her film roles include Remember the Titans, Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins, Boogie Nights and Sebastian Cole. Stage credits include For Colored Girls (directed by Jasmine Guy) and The Vagina Monologues.

Streetcar is being produced on Broadway by Stephen Byrd and Alia Jones of Front Row Productions, which presented the hit 2008 Broadway revival of Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof featuring an African-American cast led by James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose and Terrence Howard. The production transferred to London’s West End (with Jones and Rashad joined by Sanaa Lathan as Maggie and Adrian Lester as Brick) where it won the Olivier Award for Best Revival.