Barbecue is this week’s offering in the Spotlight on Plays series from Broadway’s Best Shows. The streaming reading becomes available on December 10th and will remain available through Monday, December 14th.

This is a very funny play that has an early twist you don’t see coming. Reviews of the play have often given away that twist, but I say, the less you know the better.

On a very basic level the play is about a family intervention disguised as a barbecue. They are all there to help one family member who has a substantial drinking problem. Things from there don’t go quite as the characters planned, nor as the audience thinks they will. And there are more twists ahead.

Christopher Isherwood, writing in the New York Times, had issues with the second act, but admitted, “Mr. O’Hara, the author of last season’s audacious Bootycandy, has a heat-seeking imagination when it comes to style and structure.” (There are spoilers in his review, so if you want to be surprised, don’t read it.)

I enjoyed the play when I saw it at the Geffen Playhouse in 2016. That production was directed by Colman Domingo who appears in this reading.

The rest of the cast includes Carrie Coon (2013 revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Kimberly Hébert Gregory (By the Way, Meet Vera Stark), Annie McNamara (Tony nominee for Slave Play), S. Epatha Merkerson (Come Back Little Sheba), Laurie Metcalf (Three Tall Women), David Morse (The Iceman Cometh), Kristine Nielsen (Present Laughter), Tamberla Perry and Heather Simms – both of whom appeared in Barbecue at The Public Theater.

Tickets are only $5 with proceeds benefitting The Actor’s Fund.

Photo: Robert O’Hara (Courtesy Playwrights Horizons)

The post Spotlight on Plays: Barbecue appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

Viola Davis (How to Get Away With Murder) has two Tony Awards for her performances in Fences (2010 and King Hedley II (2001)

Elisabeth Moss (The Handmaid’s Tale) appeared on stage in The Heidi Chronicles in 2015 and David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow revival in 2009.

Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan) won a Tony Award for his performance in Glengarry Glen Ross (2005). Jeffrey Tambor (Transparent) was also in that production.

Jane Fonda (Grace and Frankie) first appeared on Broadway in There Was a Little Girl in 1960. She was nominated for her performance in 2009’s 33 Variations. She later reprised that role at the Ahmanson Theatre.

Her co-star Lily Tomlin (Grace and Frankie) won a Tony Award for The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985-1986). She also performed the show at what was then called the James A. Doolittle Theatre (now the Ricardo Montalban) on Vine Street.

John Litghow (The Crown) won a Tony Award for his first Broadway role in The Changing Room (1973). He won a second for the musical The Sweet Smell of Success in 2002. He appeared in with Glenda Jackson in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1989 at the Doolittle. He most recently appeared at the Mark Taper Forum in Stories By Heart which will open next year on Broadway.

Carrie Coon (Fargo) appeared on Broadway in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 2012.

Geoffrey Rush (Genius) has only appeared on Broadway once. The show was Exit the King (2009) and he won a Tony Award.

The cast of Feud has spent quite some time on Broadway. Susan Sarandon was with Rush in Exit the King. Jessica Lange won a Tony Award for her performance in Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2016) and she appeared with Alec Baldwin (nominated for Saturday Night Live) in a 1992 revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. Alfred Molina was in Red in 2010 and he also played the part at the Mark Taper Forum. Stanley Tucci was nominated for his performance in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. Jackie Hoffman is on Broadway now in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (though I bet she’s missing today’s matinee!) She was also in the musicals Xanadu and Hairspray!

Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale) appeared in The Seagull (2008); Taking Sides (1996) and Candida (1993).

Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black) appeared on a revival of Godspell (2011) and also in Coram Boy (2007.)

Ron Cephas Jones (This Is Us) appeared in a revival of Of Mice and Men in 2014 and was also in The Motherfucker with the Hat (2011) and Gem of the Ocean (2004.)

Television host James Corden won a Tony Award for One Man, Two Guvnors in 2012. He also appeared in The History Boys in 2006. The original cast also performed the show at the Ahmanson Theatre.

And some guy named Lin-Manuel Miranda, nominated for his guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, has a few Tony Awards on his mantle. He wrote In the Heights and some musical that’s playing now at the Pantages Theatre called Hamilton.

Good luck to all the nominees and remember, you can often catch some of your favorite actors before they become famous by going to a play or musical.

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