Rosie Benton Joins Mekhi Phifer, Dulé Hill & More in Stick Fly on Broadway

Rosie Benton completes the Broadway cast of Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly, joining the previously announced Dulé Hill, Mekhi Phifer, Tracie Thoms, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Condola Rashad. The play, produced by Alicia Keys and directed by Kenny Leon, will begin previews on November 18 and opens on December 8 at the Cort Theatre.

Set at the elegant Martha’s Vineyard summer home of the well-to-do LeVay family, Stick Fly begins when two adult sons bring their significant others (one a fiancée, the other a new girlfriend) home to meet their parents for the first time. Soon, secrets are revealed, civilities are dropped and identities are explored in a harsh new light. Race and rivalry, class and family, all come together for an explosive comedy of manners about today’s complex world.

Benton joins the cast as Kimber, the well-to-do white girlfriend of plastic surgeon Flip LeVay (Phifer). Hill will play Kent “Spoon” LeVay (a writer), Thoms will play Taylor (Kent’s fiancée and an entomologist), Santiago-Hudson will play Joe LeVay (Kent and Flip’s neurosurgeon father) and Rashad will play Cheryl (a maid).

Benton has been seen on Broadway in Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Accent on Youth. She has appeared off-Broadway in Saturn Returns, Temporal Powers, Wife to James Whelan and Howard Katz, and in regional productions of Stick Fly at Arena Stage and Huntington Theatre.

Stick Fly was developed in a co-production last year between the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and Arena Stage in Washington D.C. The play had its world premiere at Chicago’s Congo Square Theatre Company in 2006 and was subsequently performed at the McCarter Theatre in 2007 and the Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles in 2009.

The creative team for the Broadway production includes David Gallo (scenic design), Reggie Ray (costume design), Beverly Emmons (lighting design) and Richard Fitzgerald/Sound Associates (sound design).