Oscar and Emmy winner Julianne Moore is set to play the title role in Faydra, a lusty new play by In the Next Room Tony nominee Sarah Ruhl that will have its world premiere Off Broadway next year.
Per the logline of the modern take on the Ancient Greek myth of Phaedra: Aphrodite aims her bow at Faydra and lets an arrow of love fly. Nothing is ever the same. Mostly because the object of Faydra’s sudden, all-devouring lust is her soon-to-be stepson. Faydra explores the impossibility of reconciling logic and longing — especially for a woman unwilling to deny desire.
Les Waters directs Faydra, which begins previews on February 2 at the Manhattan Theatre Club ahead of its February 25 opening. Other castings are TBA.
Moore won an Oscar for her lead role in 2014’s Still Alice and has been nominated four other times — twice as Lead Actress for Far from Heaven (2002) and The End of the Affair (1999) and twice for Supporting in The Hours (2002) and Boogie Nights (1997). Her big-screen credits also include The Room Next Door, May December, The Big Lebowski and many others. She won a Primetime Emmy for the 2011 telepic Game Change and a Daytime Emmy for As the World Turns in 1988. She next stars in writer-director Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, which will close the London Film Festival in October before hitting theaters December 11 via A24.
Two-time Pulitzer nominee Ruhl and Waters have a long shared history, collaborating on the 2010 Best Play Tony nominee In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) along with Eurydice, For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday and others.
“Sarah Ruhl’s bold, funny and devastating reimagining of this classic tale will draw the immensely gifted Julianne Moore back to the stage and mark Les Waters’ return to MTC after three decades,” MTC Artistic Director Nicki Hunter said in a statement.”
