Blair Underwood to Play Stanley in Broadway Revival of A Streetcar Named Desire

Blair Underwood will make his Broadway debut as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Emily Mann will direct the play, scheduled to hit Broadway in spring of 2012. No exact dates, theater or additional casting have yet been announced.

Underwood starred in the 2005 Encores! production of Purlie opposite Anika Noni Rose, and played Claudio in the 1993 Shakespeare in the Park production of Measure for Measure. His other theatrical credits include El Negro en Peru, The Game of Love and Chance and Love Letters. He also toured in a one-man show IM4: From the Mountaintop to Hip Hop, about a rap mogul who gets gunned down. Underwood recently starred in the NBC series The Event; his other television credits include L.A. Law, City of Angels, Fatherhood and Sex and the City.

Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning Streetcar tells story of the mental and emotional demise of the determined yet fragile Blanche DuBois in the squalid French Quarter apartment of her married sister and animalistic brother-in-law Stanley (Underwood). 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 won raves as Blanche in an Australian production that played BAM in 2009.