“Here There Are Blueberries,” a documentary drama built around a startling album of photographs showing members of the Auschwitz SS staff relaxing and socializing, will move to Broadway this fall for a 10-week run at the Barrymore Theatre beginning Nov. 2.
Conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman of Tectonic Theater Project (“The Laramie Project”) and written by Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, the play dramatizes what happened after an archivist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum received the album in 2007 and began trying to determine who was pictured in it and what the photographs revealed.
The unsettling thing about the album is how ordinary it looks. Rather than showing prisoners or scenes of mass murder, the photographs depict Auschwitz officers and staff eating blueberries, singing and relaxing together. The play uses that contrast to examine how people can participate in atrocities while otherwise carrying on seemingly normal lives.
The production combines projected images with short dramatic scenes. “Here There Are Blueberries” played New York Theatre Workshop Off-Broadway in 2024 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Rupert Grint to return as Ron Weasley in ‘Cursed Child’
Apparently, Tom Felton was only the beginning.
Rupert Grint, who played Ron Weasley in all eight “Harry Potter” films, will reprise the role on Broadway in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” for a 17-week engagement at the Lyric Theatre beginning Feb. 2.
Grint will become the second actor from the original film series to return to his character in the Broadway sequel, following Felton, whose run as Draco Malfoy sent the show’s box office grosses soaring.
Felton is scheduled to remain through Jan. 3, meaning the two actors will not overlap.
“Cursed Child,” which takes place decades after the original series and finds Harry, Ron, Hermione and Draco as middle-aged parents, is particularly well suited to this kind of casting. Rather than asking an actor to recreate a familiar film performance, the play allows the performers—and their characters—to return at a later stage of life.
Grint previously appeared on Broadway in the 2014 comedy “It’s Only a Play” opposite Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
‘Downstate’ headed to Broadway this fall
Bruce Norris’ deeply unsettling drama “Downstate” is headed to Broadway this fall, with a production expected at the Booth Theatre.
Although the transfer has not yet been formally announced, the Booth Theatre marquee is already lit for the play, and reports indicate that Scott Rudin will produce a new staging directed by Joe Mantello, with Francis Guinan and K. Todd Freeman returning to roles they previously played.
“Downstate” takes place in an Illinois group home shared by four men who have completed prison sentences for sex crimes but remain subject to restrictions following their release.
The play premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 2018 before receiving its Off-Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2022.
Norris is best known on Broadway for “Clybourne Park,” which won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play.
David Greenspan to lead rare revival of Stoppard’s ‘The Invention of Love’
Eight-time Obie Award winner David Greenspan will take on A.E. Housman in a rare New York revival of Tom Stoppard’s “The Invention of Love” at Theaterlab beginning Sept. 17.
The production follows Stoppard’s death last year and offers a chance to revisit one of the playwright’s less frequently produced works. “The Invention of Love,” a meditation on scholarship, memory, sexuality and unrequited love, follows the aging Housman on a journey across the River Styx as he looks back on his life and the rapidly changing world around him.
Greenspan, one of downtown theater’s most distinctive performers, has built a career around both new plays and ambitious solo interpretations of classics, including Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” and Gertrude Stein’s “Four Saints in Three Acts.”
“The Invention of Love” received its only Broadway production in 2001, directed by Jack O’Brien and starring Richard Easton and Robert Sean Leonard, both of whom won Tony Awards for their performances.