Kail ’99 Directs Broke-ology at Lincoln Center
![Francois Battiste, Wendell Pierce and Alano Miller in Broke-ology. (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)](https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/files/2009/10/Broke-ology-490x334.jpg)
Thomas Kail ’99 is the director of a new play, Broke-ology, by Nathan Louis Jackson, which opened on Oct. 5 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City. This touching and often humorous play concerns two African-American brothers who care for their ailing widowed father in Kansas City, Kansas, as they face their own responsibilities. Kail elicits first-rate performances from the four-person cast, which includes Wendell Pierce (The Wire), Crystal A. Dickinson, Francois Battiste, and Alano Miller.
![Thomas Kail '99](https://newsletter.blogs.wesleyan.edu/files/2009/10/Thomas-Kail-Oct-09-199x300.jpg)
The play opened to several positive reviews. In his review in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood wrote: “Mr. Jackson writes easygoing, believable dialogue, and the play is moving in its exploration of how time and circumstance — and the hard fact of poverty — can diminish hope, divide loving siblings and ultimately extinguish life itself.” Isherwood also singled out Kail’s “sensitive direction.”
Kail directed the Tony Award-winning musical In the Heights on Broadway, and he recently directed a production of The Wiz at New York City Center.
Broke-ology runs through November 22, 2009. For tickets, visit www.telecharge.com or call 212-239-6200.