Billy Crudup Tapped for McDonagh's Pillowman

Broadway.com has learned that Billy Crudup is in talks to play Katurian, the writer at the center of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman, when the show hits Broadway later this season.

Crudup last appeared on the New York stage in the National Actors Theatre production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in the fall of 2002. His Broadway credits include Three Sisters, Bus Stop, Arcadia and The Elephant Man. He has appeared off-Broadway in America Dreaming at the Vineyard Theatre and the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Measure For Measure in Central Park. Crudup's film credits include Grind, Sleepers, Everyone Says I Love You, Inventing the Abbotts, Monument Avenue, Without Limits, Hi-Lo Country, Princess Monoke, Waking the Dead, Jesus' Son, Almost Famous, World Traveler, Charlotte Gray and Big Fish. This fall he will be seen on the big screen in Stage Beauty, in which he plays a beloved 1660 theater star who loses his job playing ladies when real women are finally allowed to take to the stage.

The Pillowman centers on a writer in a totalitarian state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders that are happening in his town.

Directed by John Crowley, The Pillowman played earlier this year at London's National Theatre and won the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Play. David Tennant played Katurian in that mounting.

A production spokesperson could not confirm the selection of Crudup, saying: "It is premature to comment on casting for The Pillowman."