NEW YORK — Warhol and Basquiat are Broadway bound.
A new play exploring the relationship between late artists Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat is headed to the New York stage this fall.
Anthony McCarten’s hit London play, “The Collaboration,” is set to begin its American premiere at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre Nov. 29.
Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah, the drama stars Golden Globe Award nominee Paul Bettany and Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award nominee Jeremy Pope as the two iconic painters.
“The Collaboration” made its world premiere in January with a critically acclaimed production at London’s Young Vic Theatre, helmed by its artistic director Kwei-Armah.
McCarten’s script is set in the summer of 1984, when the aging New York City pop art pioneer and the newly discovered art world sensation agreed to collaborate on what would become one of the most famous exhibitions in modern art history.
“But can these two creative giants co-exist, or even thrive?” the official synopsis teases.
The London staging presented Bettany — the British theater thespian who’s mainstream credits include “Avengers” movies and the Disney Plus “WandaVision” series — with the chance to return to theater for the first time in 25 years.
Before portraying the Brooklyn-born Basquiat in London, Pope made Broadway history for garnering Tony nominations for two separate shows in the same season: Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “Choir Boy” and Dominique Morisseau’s “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Time of The Temptations.” After blazing The Great White Way, the Orlando, Florida native received high marks for Ryan Murphy’s “Netflix” miniseries “Hollywood”).
A four-time Oscar nominee, McCarten’s credits include “The Theory of Everything,” “The Two Popes,” “Darkest Hour” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Kwei-Armah previously helmed the 2018 acclaimed adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” at the Delacorte Theater for the Public’s free Shakespeare in the Park. The former BBC broadcaster previously served as artistic director at Baltimore’s Center Stage theatre, and is the co-producer of Broadway productions of “The Inheritance” and the forthcoming “Death of a Salesman.”
Before “The Collaboration” made it to London’s West End, the director, playwright and occasional singer and actor said the production “invites us behind the iconography and fame, and inside the intimate friendship between two artists” and ask audiences “to lean in closely and challenge our preconceptions.”
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