Stage Version of John Grisham's A Time to Kill to Debut at Arena Stage

A stage adaptation of John Grisham's best-selling novel A Time to Kill  will debut at Washington D.C.'s Arena Stage in May 2011. The new play, by Rupert Holmes (Drood, Curtains), will receive what is being described as a pre-Broadway production presented "by special arrangement with Daryl Roth." The Arena's 2010-2011 season will also include Anna Deavere Smith's recent off-Broadway hit Let Me Down Easy. Both additions to the previously announced season will be staged at the Mead Center's Kreeger Theater.

A Time to Kill will close Arena Stage's season in a limited run from May 6 through June 19, 2011. The play follows what happens after an unspeakable crime is committed against the daughter of Southern black man Carl Lee Hailey, who takes the law into his own hands in retribution. On trail for murder, Hailey's only hope lies with two young, idealistic white lawyers outmatched by a formidable district attorney under attack from both sides of a racially divided city. The novel was adapted for the screen in 1996, starring Samuel L. Jackson as Hailey, Matthew McConaughey as lawyer Jake Tyler Brigance, Sandra Bullock as Jake's law partner, Kevin Spacey as D.A. Rufus Buckley and Ashley Judd as Carla Brigance, Jake's wife. No casting or director for the Arena production has been announced.

Let Me Down Easy, conceived, written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith begins performances December 31, 2010, and runs through February 13. A hit in fall 2009 at off-Broadway's Second Stage, the show closely examines the price of health and the resilience of the human spirit through a series of interviews recreated onstage by Smith.

Let Me Down Easy and A Time to Kill join a previously announced season that includes Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic musical Oklahoma! (October 23-December 26, 2010), world premiere religious drama Every Tongue Confess (November 9-January 2, 2011), The NEA New Play Program Festival (January 17-30, 2011); Mary Zimmerman's The Arabian Nights (January 14-February 20); The Edward Albee Festival, featuring Tony Award winners Tracy Letts and Amy Morton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (February 25-April 24); and Lynn Nottage's Pultizer Prize-winning Ruined (April 22-June 5).