Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Colbert and Jay O. Sanders Set for Benefit Reading of Betrayal

It looks like Stephen Sondheim’s recent guest appearance on The Colbert Report awakened thespian dreams in host Stephen Colbert. The TV host and his wife, Evelyn McGee-Colbert, will join Broadway vet Jay O. Sanders in a reading of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal on January 9, 2011, according to The New York Times. The event will benefit Luna Stage, a theater company in West Orange, New Jersey.

Betrayal traces an affair between two characters (to be played by Colbert and his wife) and its effect on the female character’s marriage (with Sanders as the betrayed husband). The play is told is reverse, with the first scene set in 1977 and the final scene in 1968. The play originally starred Blythe Danner, Raul Julia and Roy Scheider. A 2000 Broadway revival starred Juliette Binoche, Liev Schreiber and John Slattery.

Colbert studied acting at Northwestern University and got his start as an improv performer and comedian at Second City. McGee-Colbert has played her husband’s mother in an episode of Strangers with Candy. Sanders’ recent New York theater credits include Pygmalion on Broadway, Central Park productions of Twelfth Night, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Stuff Happens (as George W. Bush).