Jonathan Silverstein directs the production, which opens March 15. The cast includes Heidi Armbruster (Sea of Tranquility at Atlantic Theater Company) and Dan McCabe (Pen at Playwright’s Horizons).
The play, a critique of McCarthyism, is about a 17-year-old boy in a New England boarding school who is presumed to be gay by his peers and teachers, and is ridiculed by them but befriended by a teacher's wife.
Tea and Sympathy opened on Sept. 30, 1953, and ran for 712 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Longacre Theatre, and 48th Street Theatre before closing on June 18, 1955. Elia Kazan directed the production, which starred Deborah Kerr, Leif Erickson and John Kerr. The trio also starred in Vincente Minnelli's 1956 film version, which was adapted by Anderson.
Anderson's other plays include All Summer Long, Silent Night, Lonely Night, The Days Between, You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running, I Never Sang For My Father, Solitaire and Double Solitaire. He received Oscar nominations for the screenplays "I Never Sang for My Father" and "The Nun's Story."
Silverstein's credits include Michael Albanese's Red Herring at the New York International Fringe Festival, the Keen Company's The Hasty Heart, The Triumph of Love at the Cleveland Play House and The Rats Are Getting Bigger at the New York International Fringe Festival and The Public Theater’s New Works Now! festival. Theatre Row is at 410 West 42nd Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues. Tickets are $40 and are available through Ticket Central at (212) 279-4200 or at www.ticketcentral.com.