Amy Schumer is to make her Broadway theatre debut this autumn in a play written by Steve Martin.
In Meteor Shower, Schumer will play a woman, Corky, who hosts a dinner party at her home in California with her husband, Norm. They have invited another couple over to observe the titular celestial event. The show was previously staged, without Schumer, at the Long Wharf theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Old Globe in San Diego. Variety’s Frank Rizzo described it as a “loopy satire of marriage, sex and the inner id [that] provides lots of laughs … Think of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? if Nick and Honey turned the tables on George and Martha”.
The cast is completed by Keegan-Michael Key, also making his Broadway debut, and by Laura Benanti and Alan Tudyk. The director is Jerry Zaks, who was nominated for a Tony award earlier this year for Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler. Meteor Shower is Martin’s first Broadway opening since his Tony award-nominated bluegrass musical Bright Star, which closed last summer after a disappointing box office run.
Schumer wrote on Instagram: “I got to do a Steve Martin play in college and have loved him since I saw him as the waiter in the Muppet movie. Martin tweeted praise for Meteor Shower’s “impeccable cast” before joking: “Just think, we can all love each other until the first day of rehearsal!”
Previews begin at the Booth theatre in New York on 1 November. The production officially opens on 29 November.
