Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan will star in the first major New York revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window this February at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM announced today.
The production, running Feb. 4-23, 2023, at the BAM Harvey Theater, will be directed by Obie Award winner Anne Kauffman.
Described by BAM as a “sweeping drama of identity, idealism, and love,” The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window is set in 1960s Greenwich Village and focuses on a diverse group of friends “whose loudly proclaimed progressive dreams can’t quite match up with reality. At the center are Sidney and Iris Brustein, fighting to see if their marriage – with all its crackling wit, passion, and petty cruelty – will be the final sacrifice to Sidney’s ideals.”
The play debuted on Broadway in 1964, five years after Hansberry’s masterpiece A Raisin in the Sun and shortly before her death in 1965 at age 34. Brustein’s Window has not been produced on a major New York stage since then. Kauffman presented an acclaimed revival of the work in 2016 at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.
“We are in dire need of Hansberry’s voice…we know so little of her and define her by one play: A Raisin in the Sun,” Kauffman said in a statement. “Without a doubt Raisin is a masterpiece, but Hansberry’s evolution and contribution to this country’s culture, history and political motion stretches way beyond that astonishing accomplishment. Her work as an artist and activist is varied and deep. The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, written four years after A Raisin in the Sun, embraces human complexity and frailty while aggressively shaking us free of our delusions, yet very few people know of it. Now they’ll know.”
David Binder, BAM Artistic Director, said, “During the five years I spent working to produce the first Broadway revival of A Raisin in the Sun (in 2004), I fell in love with The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. I shared this passion for Lorraine’s play with Anne and the two of us spent many, many years working together to mount the show in New York. It’s an honor to present Lorraine’s beautiful, and rarely seen, play, finally, at BAM.”
The creative team and full company will be announced soon.
In addition to his numerous screen credits, Isaac has appeared on the New York stage in Hamlet, We Live Here, Romeo and Juliet and Two Gentlemen of Verona and Beauty of the Father, among others. Brosnahan, best known for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, played Desdemona Off Broadway in Othello opposite Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo, and made her Broadway debut for the Roundabout Theater Company’s The Big Knife opposite Bobby Cannavale, Richard Kind and Marin Ireland.
The original 1964 production of Brustein’s Window starred Gabriel Dell and Rita Moreno. A short-lived 1972 revival starred Hal Linden and Zohra Lampert.