HARTFORD — Hartford Stage said it had its highest sales day in its 52-year history after announcing Kevin Bacon will star in a stage adaptation of the story that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic film “Rear Window.”
The movie star will headline the haunting tale of a man in a wheelchair who witnesses a possible murder. It’s been adapted for the stage by Keith Reddin and will run from Oct. 22 to Nov. 15.
Bacon is a Golden Globe Award winner whose films include “A Few Good Men,” “Apollo 13” and “Footloose.” He’s been on Broadway in “Slab Boys” and “An Almost Holy Picture.”
“Rear Window” was adapted for the stage by Keith Reddin and directed by Hartford Stage Artistic Director Darko Tresnjak, and will run from October 22-November 15.
“I read Cornell Woolrich’s classic crime story ‘Rear Window’ in high school, and it made a lasting impression,” Tresnjak said. “I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to direct a stage version thirty years later, when the issues of surveillance and voyeurism have become even more pertinent. Keith Reddin’s taut adaptation takes place inside of a sweltering, claustrophobic apartment, very much like the addled brain of the leading character, who will be played by Kevin Bacon. I can’t imagine finer collaborators than Kevin and Keith in exploring the terrifying psychological landscape of this timeless thriller.”
The play is based on the same short story by Cornell Woolrich that inspired the Alfred Hitchcock film, a 1954 Academy Award nominee. Woolrich was an admired and influential writer of crime fiction. His stories and novels were turned into movies by such renowned directors as Hitchcock, Harold Clurman, Francois Truffaut, Robert Siodmak and Jacques Tourneur.
In 2014 Tresnjak earned the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for Best Direction of a Musical for the Broadway production of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, which he debuted at Hartford Stage in 2012. Earlier this year, he won the OBIE Award for directing The Killer at Theatre for a New Audience.
Reddin’s plays include Frame 312, Life and Limb, All the Rage, and Rum and Coke. Also an actor (films Lolita, Revolutionary Road), Reddin has adapted several other works for the stage, including Bulgakov’s Black Snow, Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, and Thornton Wilder’s Heaven’s My Destination
