Douglas Lyons’ Chicken and Biscuits will make its Broadway premiere this fall, with performances beginning September 23 at the Circle in the Square Theatre. Opening night is set for October 10. Tickets are now on sale.
Tony nominee Norm Lewis (Porgy and Bess, The Phantom of the Opera) and stage and screen favorite Michael Urie (Torch Song, Ugly Betty) will star in the limited engagement, currently scheduled to run through January 2, 2022. Zhailon Levingston will direct, becoming, at 27, the youngest Black director in Broadway history.
Additional casting will be announced later. Among the producing team are Pamela Ross, Hunter Arnold, E. Clayton Cornelious (a former castmate of Lyons during their time in Beautiful on Broadway), and Leah Michalos.
Set at a family funeral, Chicken and Biscuits follows Baneatta and Beverly as they attempt to put their sisterly differences aside to bury their father, Bernard. All is (relatively) well until it’s revealed that Bernard had not just two daughters, but three.
Lyons initially conceived the play while in residence with The Directors Company. It was subsequently developed at The Front Porch Readings Series, Queens Theatre's 2019 New American Voices Series, and Frank Silvera's Workshop at The Billie Holiday Theatre before officially premiering at Queens Theatre in 2020 (in a run cut short by the coronavirus pandemic). 59E59 Theaters presented a virtual reading (featuring Urie) earlier this year.
The Circle in the Square is also slated to be home to an upcoming revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo. The production was originally scheduled for spring 2020—the art for which has since remained up at the theatre's front-of-house. During the shutdown the production announced its intention to push the premiere to March 2021; a representative for the show says it's now planned for spring 2022 (no confirmation yet on dates).
