Richards ’69 Producing Two New Broadway Shows

Jeffrey Richards ’69, along with Jerry Frankel and Steve Traxler, will produce two new Broadway plays in the coming months. First up is a revival of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, scheduled to begin performances at the Shubert Theater in New York City on Feb. 26, 2009.

Blithe Spirit is a comedy about Charles Condomine, who with his second wife, Ruth, invites a local medium, Madame Arcati, to his house to do some research into the spirit world for his new book. But trouble arises when Arcati conjures up the ghost of Charles’s first wife, Elvira.

The new production has a stellar cast including four-time Tony Award winner Angela Lansbury, two-time Tony Award winner Christine Ebersole, film star Rupert Everett (My Best Friend’s Wedding), who will be making his Broadway debut, and theater veterans Simon Jones and Jayne Atkinson. Tony Award-winning Michael Blakemore will direct.

Richards’ next production will be Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty, an MCC Theater production that was a recent hit off-Broadway. This comic drama explores America’s obsession with physical beauty. The play is scheduled to begin previews at Broadway’s Lyceum Theater on March 6, 2009.

Richards is also one of the producers of three recent successful Broadway productions: August: Osage County (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play), Spring Awakening (winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical) and Speed-the-Plow.