Casting for the London production of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, directed by Rupert Goold, is now done, broadway.com reported Monday. The show, which will officially open Feb. 13, will star Ed Stoppard, Amanda Hale and Mark Umbers with Jessica Lange. Stoppard, who also starred in a London production of Hamlet, recently finished filming Cassandra’s Dream, a Woody Allen film that also stars Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor.
In other London theater news, Grease is making a return to London’s West End, although no dates for that production have been announced yet, according to broadway.com.
Grease, which is also coming back to Broadway in June 2007, plans to cast stars Sandy and Danny through the reality TV show “You’re the One That I Want.” The show debuted Sunday on NBC. Viewers will pick the two leads for the revival of the Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey musical.
In other Broadway news, Douglas Carter Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed, currently running at the Cort Theatre on Broadway, will close Feb. 18, according to broadway.com. The production, which stars Julie White, Tom Everett Scott, Johnny Galecki and Ari Graynor, will have played 22 previews and 112 performances on Broadway by the time it closes.
Casting for the final workshop of Xanadu has been completed, according to playbill.com. Among others, Jane Krakowski, Cheyenne Jackson, Tony Roberts and others have been cast in the workshop. Casting for the Broadway production, which will open at the Helen Hayes Theatre May 7, has not been announced yet.
On a sadder note, Vincent Sardi, Jr., son of the man who founded the Broadway restaurant of the same name, died Jan. 4. He ran the famous restaurant, an institution as much as any of The Great White Way’s theaters, for 50 years. He was 91.
-Christina Amoroso
