Actor Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina) is heading back to a New York stage for the first time in five years.
According to Deadline, he will join Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) in the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. The play is scheduled to run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) from February 4-23, 2023.
In 1959, Hansberry was the first Black woman to have one of her plays performed on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window debuted on Broadway in 1964. Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer the following year at the age of 34.
Set in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window tells the story of Sidney and Iris Brustein, a married couple who are part of “a diverse group of friends whose progressive dreams can’t quite match reality.” Sidney and Iris are fighting to save their marriage but are unsure if it can survive Sidney’s ideals. BAM describes it as a “sweeping drama of identity, idealism, and love.”
Anne Kauffman will direct the play. In a statement, she said, “we are in dire need of Hansberry’s voice” since so little is known about her besides her most well-known play, A Raisin in the Sun.
“Without a doubt, Raisin is a masterpiece, but Hansberry’s evolution and contribution to this country’s culture, history, and political motion stretches way beyond that astonishing accomplishment,” Kauffman said. “Her work as an artist and activist is varied and deep. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, written four years after A Raisin in the Sun, embraces human complexity and frailty while aggressively shaking us free of our delusions, yet very few people know of it. Now they’ll know.”
Isaac’s past New York stage credits include We Live Here, Grace, Romeo and Juliet, Beauty of the Father, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Hamlet, which was the last play he performed in 2017. He was set to star alongside Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha) in a revival of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters in 2020, but the play was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.