Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane to Star in Broadway Revival of Waiting for Godot

Tony Award winners Bill Irwin and Nathan Lane will return to Broadway in April to star in Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. The production will replace a previously announced revival of Bob Fosse’s Dancin’, which has been rescheduled for the 2009-2010 season. The limited engagement of Waiting for Godot will begin previews on April 10 and open on April 30 at Studio 54, directed by Anthony Page

The April 30 opening date is significant in that it is the last day of eligibility for the 2009 Tony Awards. A Roundabout spokesperson notes that the company had registered and confirmed an April 30 opening night with the Broadway League; on October 15, the Broadway-bound musical 9 to 5 announced that it, too, will open on April 30.

Waiting for Godot revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone—or something—named Godot. Vladimir Irwin and Estragon Lane wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind’s inexhaustible search for meaning. Beckett’s first professionally produced play, Waiting for Godot premiered in Paris in 1953 and on Broadway in 1956 at the Golden Theatre starring Bert Lahr and E.G. Marshall.

Irwin, a 2005 Tony winner for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf directed by Page, played Lucky in a 1988 off-Broadway production of Waiting for Godot at Lincoln Center Theater that starred Steve Martin and Robin Williams. He received a 1993 Obie Award for starring in Beckett’s Texts for Nothing at the Public Theater. The recipient of multiple Tony nominations for his comedy Largely New York, Irwin has appeared on Broadway in The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, Fool Moon, The Regard of Flight and Accidental Death of an Anarchist. For the Roundabout, he directed and starred in his adaptation of Scapin and directed A Flea in Her Ear. The Signature Theatre devoted a season entirely to his original work as writer, director and performer.

Lane received Tony Awards for The Producers and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and most recently starred on Broadway in David Mamet’s November. His many Broadway credits include Butley, The Odd Couple, The Frogs, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Love! Valour! Compassion!, Laughter on the 23rd Floor, Guys and Dolls, On Borrowed Time, Some Americans Abroad, Wind in the Willows, Merlin and Present Laughter. Off-Broadway credits include Dedication or the Stuff of Dreams, Trumbo, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Bad Habits, The Lisbon Traviata, In a Pig’s Valise, The Film Society and The Common Pursuit. In television he has received five Emmy nominations and won two Emmy Awards as well as a People’s Choice Award.

Additional cast members and the design team for Waiting for Godot will be announced shortly.