Nearly 40 years after it won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Charles Fuller's "A Soldier's Play" is making its Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York. The original production opened in 1981 at the Negro Ensemble Company at the Theatre Four, now the Julia Miles Theater.
Set at the U.S. Army base Fort Neal in Louisiana, in 1944 when the military remained racially segregated, the play explores wide-ranging effects of racisim through the investigation of a murder of an African-American officer. Roundabout describes the work as triggering "a gripping barrage of questions about sacrifice, service, and identity in America."
The new production, starring David Alan Greer, Blair Underwood, Nnamdi Asomuga and Jerry O'Connell and directed by Kenny Leon, is scheduled to run through March 15, 2020. Ticket information is available here.
David Alan Grier, who is appearing in the play a third time — he played the role of Private James Wilkie/Private C.J. Memphis in an earlier production, Corporal Bernard Cobb in the film adaptation and now has been cast as Sergeant Vernon Waters — spoke to "The Today Show" about what keeps drawing him back to the material.
"To come back to Broadway, I tell myself it has to be an offer I can't refuse. [...] This role, Waters, I just have to do it."
Underwood, who plays Captain Richard Davenport, said of the show in a Roundabout video introducing the cast: "It's rich and resonates as much today as it did in the 1980s."
O'Connell echoed Underwood's sentiment, saying, "It's a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, and it's more relevant today than it was 40 years ago."
In its review, the Financial Times said the production "combines the structural virtues of a well-oiled police procedural with a vivid exploration of racism's crippling psychological toll." Ben Brantley in the New York Times praised its "authentic and exciting pulse." And in Variety, Marilyn Stasio opens with this line:
"Now, that’s what I call a play!" Read her full review here.