Cast (left to right): Grant Chapman, Tiffany Hobbs, Joe Knezevich, Tess Mails Kincaid, Louis Reyes McWilliams, Lee Osoria, Brad Raymond and Stephen Ruffin.
The Alliance Theatre is excited to announce the cast of its upcoming world premiere, A Tale of Two Cities. The Charles Dickens classic is adapted by Playwright Brendan Pelsue and directed by Leora Morris. A Tale of Two Cities runs on The Coca-Cola Stage at Alliance Theatre February 21 – March 17, 2024. Opening night is Wednesday, February 28, 2024.
The Dickens classic is set in London and Paris in 1787, before and during the French Revolution and examines the ideals, motivations, and character of the rich and the poor. In Pelsue’s adaptation, eight actors play over fifty characters sharing the identities of the powerful and the powerless.
“What I really admire about this choice [of doubling] and the way it works in the adaptation is that it allows us to ask these big questions about fate, and social mobility, and the spectrum of wealth to poverty, and the role of the individual in impacting the course of history (and more) without translocating it in time and space,” said Director Leora Morris. “It’s not set in contemporary Atlanta, but it feels to me like it has the potential to speak directly to Atlantans about the experience of being born, growing up, or living here in our current time.”
The cast features Grant Chapman (New York Classical Theater: King Leer, Alliance Theatre: Winnie the Pooh), as Actor Track 5, Tiffany Hobbs (FX’s: Atlanta and Pose, Broadway: The Waitress) as Actor Track 3, Tess Malis Kincaid (Netflix: Ozark, Alliance Theatre: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and August: Osage County) as Actor Track 6, Joe Knezevich (Alliance Theatre: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, August: Osage County, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) as Actor Track 8, Louis Reyes McWilliams (Off-Broadway, The Public Theater: Shakespeare in the Park) as Actor Track 2, Lee Osorio (Alliance Theatre: The Temple Bombing and Ugly Lies the Bone) as Actor Track 4, Brad Raymond (Alliance Theatre: A Christmas Carol, Born for This: The BeBe Winans Story) as Actor Track 7, and Stephen Ruffin (FX: Snowfall, Alliance Theatre: Too Heavy for Your Pocket) as Actor Track 1. Understudies include Brant Adams, Daniel Annone, Sean Dale, Rebecca Gunn, Danielle Montgomery, and Ryan Siegel.
The creative team for A Tale of Two Cities includes Director Leora Morris (Alliance: A Christmas Carol, Ride the Cyclone, Crossing Delancey), Playwright Brendan Pelsue (Don Juan, Read to Me), Costume Designer Fabian Fidel Aguilar, Set and Lighting Designer Jiyoun Chang, Composer Chris Ross-Ewart, and Fight Choreographer Jake Guinn.
Additional production support is provided by Stage Manager Liz Campbell, Assistant Stage Manager Barbara Gantt O’Haley, Stage Management Production Assistant LaMarr White, Jr., Line Producers Christopher Moses and Jody Feldman, Associate Set Designer Joo Kim, Associate Lighting Designer David Reingold, and Production Management Lead Lawrence Bennett.
“I have been really excited by the way the team has been inventing a kind of cosmos, a small planet or universe, in which it feels like the story is told,” said Playwright Brendan Pelsue. “Leora is so rigorous in getting us all to attend to what the script is asking, and I think we can really see that in this design that feels both estranging and recognizable––that creates a planet we all visit, which in the way is always the experience of telling and retelling a story.”
Learn more about A Tale of Two Cities.