Kevin Bacon will be channeling Jimmy Stewart in a stage version of the classic crime story “Rear Window” to play this fall at Connecticut’s Hartford Stage.
Tony winner Darko Tresnjak (“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder”) will direct the production, which will run from October 22-November 15.
Keith Reddin adapted the play from Cornwell Woolrich’s short story, which was also the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1954 thriller starring Stewart as a man confined to his big-city apartment who thinks he may have witnessed a murder by his cross-the-courtyard neighbor.
The stage version of “Rear Window” is presented by special arrangement with producers Charlie Lyons, Jay Russell and Jeff Steen.
Bacon, a Golden Globe winner for the 2009 HBO movie “Taking Chance,” has starred in movies such as “A Few Good Men,” “Apollo 13,” “Footloose,” “JFK” and next month’s “Black Mass” opposite Johnny Depp. He recently wrapped two seasons on Fox’s thriller series “The Following.”
He has appeared on Broadway twice, in “Slab Boys” in 1983 and “An Almost Holy Picture” in 2002.
Tresnjak won the Tony last year for directing the Tony-winning Best Musical “A Gentleman’s Guide,” which premiered at Hartford Stage in 2012.
“I read Cornell Woolrich’s classic crime story ‘Rear Window’ in high school, and it made a lasting impression,” Tresnjak said in a statement. “I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to direct a stage version thirty years later, when the issues of surveillance and voyeurism have become even more pertinent.”