DOWNSTATE Delays Start of Broadway Previews

Downstate is headed to Broadway a bit later than originally planned. According to Telecharge, previews will now begin on Monday, October 19. This is two days later than the originally announced date of Saturday, October 17. 

The Broadway premiere of Downstate, directed by three-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello, will come to the Booth Theatre for a limited 12-week engagement. Opening night is set for Sunday, November 15.

The show made its 2018 world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, its UK premiere at The National Theatre in 2019 and its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons in 2022, featuring Glenn Davis, K. Todd Freeman, Francis Guinan, Tim Hopper, Eddie Torres, Susanna Guzmán, Sally Murphy, and Gabi Samels. Read the reviews from Chicago and New York. 

The Broadway cast of Downstate will feature Cassie Beck, two-time Tony Award nominee K. Todd Freeman, Evening Standard Award nominee Francis Guinan, Adrian Martinez, Al’Jaleel McGhee, Tony Award nominee Thomas Sadoski, Ivy Wolk, and Emmy Award winner Liza Colón-Zayas.

In Downstate Illinois, four men convicted of sex crimes against minors live together in a group home, their every movement governed by restrictions that continue to close in around them. The house’s fragile order begins to fracture as an accuser arrives to confront his abuser, bringing with him a storm of unspoken memories. Shockingly funny, savage and furiously political, Bruce Norris’s play pulls audiences into a world where punishment is unending, compassion itself can feel like a transgression, and forgiveness is always out of reach.

Mantello returns to Broadway with Downstate following his historic production of Arthur Miller’s Death of Salesman, which made Broadway history as the most awarded revival of a play ever and the most Tony Award-winning show of the year, with six Tony wins including Best Revival of a Play and Best Direction of a Play.