DYLAN McDERMOTT
Golden Globe-winning actor Dylan McDermott will be in the cast of the first play of the McCarter Theatre Center’s 2015-16 season: the American premiere of Tennessee Williams’ “Baby Doll,’ co-adapted and directed McCarter’s artistic director, Emily Mann. The play will run at the Princeton theater’s Berlind Stage from Sept. 11 to Oct. 11.
McDermott will play Silva Vacarro. Others in the cast will include Susanna Hoffman as Baby Doll, Robert Joy as Archie Lee, Patricia Conolly as Aunt Rose Comfort and Brian McCann as Sheriff.
Williams created the screenplay for the Elia Kazan-directed, Oscar-nominated 1956 film version — controversial at the time because of its sexual content — by combining elements of two of his one-act plays, “27 Wagons Full of Cotton” and “The Long Stay Cut Short” (or “The Unsatisfactory Supper”).
Pierre Laville wrote a new stage adaptation of “Baby Doll” that was produced in Paris in 2009, and Mann then co-adapted it for American audiences.
In a press release, Mann described “Baby Doll” as “another glorious Williams creation. Funny, erotic and dangerous — it’s a love story, but it’s also about the awakening of a young woman — both in terms of her sexuality and her own agency.”
This production will mark a reunion for McDermott and Mann: He was directed by her in a production of Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie” at the McCarter in 1991.
For information, visit mccarter.org.
