THE MORNING LINE DATE: Monday, December 19, 2016 FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh PAGES: 6, including this page

December 19, 2016

Al Pacino and Judith Light to Star in Play About Tennessee Williams

By Joshua Barone Al Pacino and Judith Light — two award-winning stalwarts of the stage and screen — will star as Tennessee Williams and his close friend in Dotson Rader’s “God Looked Away” at the Pasadena Playhouse in California, ahead of a possible Broadway run.

The production, which opens on Feb. 8 for a six-week run, will inaugurate the theater’s PlayWorks program, which presents works in process.

There has been some speculation since the summer that “God Looked Away” would head to Broadway after an out-of-town tryout. The show’s producers have yet to confirm whether or when that may happen. (April 27 is the cutoff for Tony Award eligibility.)

Mr. Rader’s play, an adaptation of his 1985 memoir, “Tennessee: Cry of the Heart,” about his intimate relationship with Williams, homes in on the playwright’s final, tumultuous years. Robert Allan Ackerman, who worked with Mr. Pacino in a 1992 production of Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” on Broadway, will direct.

Mr. Pacino’s most recent Broadway appearance, in David Mamet’s “China Doll,” had a rocky start; opening night was delayed as the script underwent multiple revisions. The play was critically panned but commercially successful, recouping its original investment costs.

Ms. Light (“Transparent”), who was recently onstage in Neil LaBute’s “All the Ways to Say I Love You,” will play Williams’s friend Estelle. Other cast members include Garrett Clayton (“Hairspray Live!”) and Miles Gaston Villanueva, of the soap opera “The Young and the Restless,” as Baby — a term of endearment Williams used for Mr. Rader.

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