[title]
Broadway is about to get Smart.
The cultural dominance of Jean Smart in the past few years has largely taken place on HBO, which she began taking over in 2019 with Watchmen and over which she has ruled since the 2021 debuts of Mare of Easttown and, of course, Hacks, in which she plays the cutthroat comedian Deborah Vance (and for whose three seasons she has won three Emmy Awards). But television has long been Smart's domain, from Designing Women in the 1980s to 24 and Frasier in the 2000s. Today, producers announced that she will shortly move to extend her queendom into relatively uncharted territory: the Broadway stage.
Smart will return to the Street for 12 weeks this summer to star in Call Me Izzy, a darkly comic one-woman play by the writer, actor and erstwhile CBS News correspondent Jamie Wax. Smart's character is described as "one woman in rural Louisiana who has a secret that is both her greatest gift and her only way out" and who "resists being silenced by embracing her tenacity, humor, and fiery imagination." Sarna Lapine (Sunday in the Park with George) will direct the world premiere.
Call Me Izzy will begin previews at Studio 54 on May 24 and run through August 17, with an official opening night on June 12. It is slated to be the first Broadway production of the 2024–25 season, to be followed by Mamma Mia!, which announced its impending return last week, and the new Kristin Chenoweth musical The Queen of Versailles, which premiered in Boston last year and also announced its Broadway dates today. (Versailles will costar F. Murray Abraham and begin previews at the St. James Theatre on October 8; you can find out more about it here.) For its part, Studio 54 is already booked for the fall: It will host the Roundabout's much-anticipated import of Oedipus.
The production will be Smart's first Broadway role since she played the glamorous Lorraine Sheldon (opposite Nathan Lane) in the Roundabout's 2000 revival of The Man Who Came to Dinner, for which she earned a Tony nomination. Prior to that, her only Broadway credit was a brief turn as Marlene Dietrich in the 1981 bioplay Piaf.
Tickets to see Smart in Call Me Izzy go on sale to the general public at 10am on Tuesday, March 18—but if you visit the show's website you can sign up to get access 24 hours early.
