Matthew Broderick to Return to Broadway in Roundabout's The Philanthropist
by Broadway.com Staff • Oct 6, 2008
Matthew Broderick is returning to Broadway next year, headlining the Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway revival of Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist under the direction of David Grindley. The comedy will start performances at the American Airlines Theatre on April 10, with an opening set for April 26.
In this spoof of the world of modern academia written as a response to Moliere's The Misanthrope, Broderick will play Philip, an indecisive philology lecturer who struggles to keep his own life dramas in balance while on the outside world, the prime minister and his cabinet have been assassinated.
One of the early plays by Hampton, who went on to write Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Sunset Boulevard and translations of Art, Life x 3 and The Seagull currently being performed on Broadway, The Philanthropist debuted on Broadway in 1971 with Alec McCowen in the lead. It was revived by the Manhattan Theater Club in 1983 with David McCallum as Philip, performing alongside Glenne Headly, Cherry Jones and Brent Spiner. Grindley himself directed a London revival at the Donmar Warehouse in 2005 starring Simon Russell Beale.
A well-loved film star, Broderick was last seen on the New York stage in the 2005 hit Broadway revival of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. Broderick won Tony Awards for Brighton Beach Memoirs and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and appeared on Broadway in The Producers, Night Must Fall, Taller Than a Dwarf and Torch Song Trilogy, as well as the Roundabout's off-Broadway staging of The Foreigner in 2004.
Additional cast members and the creative team for The Philanthropist will be announced shortly.
