Condola Rashad (Getty Images)
Orlando Bloom will make his debut on the Great White Way in Broadway’s revival of “Romeo & Juliet.”
Playing a much-older Romeo, the 35-year-old “Lord of the Rings” actor will star alongside Tony-nominee Condola Rashad, 26, and will be directed by five-time Tony nominee David Leveaux.
Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers will be showcased as an interracial couple. Leveaux stressed that the idea of exploring the racial difference between the two feuding Italian families came organically after the casting of the lead actor and actress.
“I did not set out to create some conceptual frame,” Leveaux told the Associated Press. “At the end of the day, if you’re sitting in Row E in a Broadway theater, you either believe that these two people are in love and are invested in them or the play doesn’t work.”
The director immediately noticed Bloom and Rashad’s chemistry when they recreated the famous balcony scene in Los Angeles.
“The first line out of Condola’s mouth made Orlando laugh,” he said. “I looked at him and it was like watching a man shed every ounce of armor he had as a celebrity and just adore this girl. I thought, ‘There you go.'”
It will be the first “Romeo and Juliet” on Broadway since Paul Ryan Rudd and Pamela Payton-Wright played the doomed lovers in a 1977 Circle in the Square production.
The play will begin previews Aug. 25 for a Sept. 19 opening at the Richard Rodgers Theater.
With AP