“Will and Grace” star Debra Messing will make her Broadway debut in "Outside Mullingar," a new play by Tony and Academy Award winner John Patrick Shanley, producers said Friday.
It is the first time Shanley has been back on Broadway since sweeping most of the major theatrical honors and nabbing the Pulitzer Prize for his 2005 sexual molestation drama "Doubt."
In addition to Messing, the play will reunite Shanley with his "Doubt" star and director, Brian F. O’Byrne and Doug Hughes.
The playwright drew on another of his most famous works to describe the plot of his latest play as kind of an “Irish Moonstruck.” Shanley wrote the screenplay to that 1987 Cher/Nicolas Cage romantic comedy.
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But instead of "Moonstruck"s' New York setting, "Outside Mullingar" unfolds in rural Ireland and centers on a man who has spent his entire life on a cattle farm and the woman who lives right next door, smitten with him, while the years pass them by.
"Outside Mullingar" will make its world premiere at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Jan. 23, 2014. Previews will begin on Jan. 2,
It will be produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club.