Denzel Washington might be a huge, multiple Oscar-minted Hollywood star, but he’ll be stepping into some big shoes next spring when, according to ArtsBeat, he takes to an as yet unspecified Broadway stage in the role of Troy in a revival of August Wilson‘s Fences. When the play premiered on Broadway in 1987 it won a Pulitzer and a Tony, and starred James Earl Jones as Troy. That original production was a commercial and critical success, running for over 500 performances.
The play follows a conversation between two friends who are garbageman, one of whom (Troy) is an ex-baseball player who confronts his boss about a company policy that prohibits black men from driving garbage trucks. Between this news and Abigail Breslin in The Miracle Worker, Broadway producers seem to be doing their best to keep the star power (and therefore, in theory, the revenue) at a maximum. Denzel last appeared on Broadway as Brutus in a critically panned, commercially successful production of Julius Caesar in 2005.