Ketti Frings’ 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Look Homeward, Angel will receive its first-ever Broadway revival next fall. Director Daniel Sullivan will reteam with with award-winning Proof playwright David Auburn, who is set to adapt the piece.
Frings’ play is loosely based on the autobiographical 1929 novel by Thomas Wolfe. Set in North Carolina in 1916, the story follows Eugene Grant through a series of life-changing experiences—a first love, a family death and his struggle to break away from home and his past.Look Homeward, Angel first opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on November 28, 1957, with Anthony Perkins as Eugene. The show earned seven Tony Award nominations and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It ran for 564 performances, closing in April 1959, and later inspired a TV movie in 1972, featuring Timothy Bottoms in the lead role and an all-star cast that included Charles Durning, Barnard Hughes, Nancy Marchand, E.G. Marshall, James Naughton, Geraldine Page and Doris Roberts.
The revival marks Auburn and Sullivan’s first Broadway collaboration since Proof in 2000. That show earned Sullivan a Tony Award for Best Direction, and Auburn the Tony for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel and Steve Traxler—the team behind August: Osage County and Speed-the-Plow—will produce. Look Homeward, Angel will play at a Shubert theaterto be announced. No casting has been set at this time.