This Is Us star Chrissy Metz, who earned a Golden Globe nomination this week for her performance on the NBC drama, will make her professional stage debut at the Geffen Playhouse in 2018.
Metz will head the cast of Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig, which will play the Geffen May 16–June 24, 2018, with an official opening May 23. She previously starred in a staged reading of the play as a benefit for MCC Theater.
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LaBute has updated the play, which premiered at MCC in 2004, for the Geffen run. The original cast included Jeremy Piven, Keri Russell, Andrew McCarthy, and Ashlie Atkinson.
The play concerns a youngish big city businessman who unexpectedly finds himself attracted to an outgoing, plus-sized librarian. The relationship furnishes him with feelings of contentment and growing maturity, but causes him unending and increasing anxiety at work, where the prying and judgmental minds of his co-workers prove merciless in their assessment of his new mate.
Jo Bonney, who directed the MCC premiere as well as a 2007 Geffen run, will also direct this new version of the play.
LaBute said in a statement, “Not long after Fat Pig’s extended run at the Geffen, I decided to expand the play to include another office scene and a varied take on the ending. Both of these additions give new voice to the female characters in particular, yet I have never allowed the material to be added to a production until now. I have waited for a revival that excited me and that I could be an intimate part of, and I’ve now found that opportunity in the return of this play to its Los Angeles home.
“I feel so lucky to be returning to the Geffen Playhouse with a show that had such success there in its first incarnation, and with its original director, Jo Bonney. I can’t wait to work with Jo again and to have this exciting chance to see Chrissy Metz on stage.”
Fat Pig replaces LaBute’s The Way We Get By in the 2017–2018 Geffen season.
