Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons, Celia Keenan-Bolger to Star in Paula Vogel’s Mother Play

The title, dates, casting and initial creative team members have been announced for the world premiere of Paula Vogel’s upcoming Broadway play. Mother Play, which was untitled in its initial announcement, will play a limited engagement at Second Stage’s Hayes Theatre beginning on April 2, 2024, ahead of an official opening night on April 25. The play is schedule to run through June 27.

Tony and Academy Award winner Jessica Lange will play Phyllis, four-time Emmy winner Jim Parsons will take on the role of Carl and Tony winner Celia Keenan-Bolger will play Martha. Casting is by the Telsey Office. 

In Mother Play, matriarch Phyllis and her teenage children, Carl and Martha, move into a new apartment as they sift through their past and adjust to the changing world around them. Phyllis has inflexible convictions about what her children need, and beware the child that seeks their own future.

As previously announced, Mother Play will be directed by Tony nominee Tina Landau. The creative team will also include two-time Tony-winning scenic designer David Zinn, four-time Tony-nominated costume designer Toni-Leslie James, two-time Tony-nominated lighting designer Jen Schriever and sound designer Jill B.C. Du Boff.

Vogel was last represented on Broadway with the 2022 production of her Pulitzer Prize-winning How I Learned to Drive, earning her a Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Play. Vogel’s Main Stem debut came in 2017 with her play, Indecent, which earned the writer a Best Play Tony nod.

Lange was last seen on Broadway in the 2016 production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, for which she won the Tony for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play. Lange previously appeared in the 2005 revival of The Glass Menagerie and the 1992 mounting of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Best known as the star of the long-running series The Big Bang Theory, Parsons made his Broadway debut in The Normal Heart. He went on to appear in the 2012 revival of Harvey, An Act of God and, most recently, the Tony-winning revival of The Boys in the Band.

Keenan-Bolger won the 2019 Tony for her turn as Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Her other Main Stem credits include The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the 2006 revival of Les Misérables, Peter and the Starcatcher, the 2013 mounting of The Glass Menagerie and the 2016 production of The Cherry Orchard.

Mother Play is being produced by Second Stage Theater Company under the leadership of president and artistic director Carole Rothman and interim executive director Lisa Lawer Post.