Touring cast announced for 'August: Osage County'
Chicago area stage veteran Shannon Cochran, so compelling as Eleanor in Writers Theatre's 2008 revival of "The Lion in Winter," takes on the role of Barbara Fordham - one of the formidable females in Tracy Letts' Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning "August: Osage County" - in the play's national tour.
Academy Award winner Estelle Parsons, who has played the dysfunctional family's matriarch Violet on Broadway for the last year, heads up the tour which kicks off next month in Denver and comes to Chicago's Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre Feb. 2 through 14, 2010.
The cast also includes local standout Steven Key, a veteran of Remy Bumppo, About Face and Shattered Globe theaters, as Little Charles.
Letts' blisteringly real, darkly comic drama about a modern American family in all its ragged glory premiered nearly two years ago at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. It transferred to Broadway (where it continues to run with TV's Phylicia Rashad in the lead role) and earned five Tony Awards, including one for director Anna D. Shapiro, lead actress Deanna Dunagan, supporting actress Rondi Reed and set designer Todd Rosenthal.
• In other theater news, Goodman Theatre received a $275,000 grant from the Shubert Foundation which will go toward operating expenses of the 84-year-old theater. The donation marks the largest operating support grant in the theater's history. Goodman also recently received a $500,000 grant for capital improvements from the Build Illinois Bond Fund.