Every day is opening night.

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Rick Miramontez / Pete Sanders / Scott Braun
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE

EMMY AWARD® WINNER
TOM SKERRITT
TO MAKE
BROADWAY DEBUT
IN THE NEW
COURTROOM DRAMA
“ A T I M E T O K I L L ”

**CASTING NOW COMPLETE**

PREVIEWS BEGIN SEPTEMBER 28, 2013
OPENING NIGHT SET FOR OCTOBER 20, 2013
TICKETS NOW ON SALE

New York, NY – Producers Daryl Roth and Eva Price announced today that Emmy Award®-winning actor Tom Skerritt will make his Broadway debut in A Time to Kill, Tony® Award-winning playwright Rupert Holmes’ stage adaptation of John Grisham’s best-selling novel. Skerritt will portray Lucien Wilbanks, the mentor to protagonist Jake Brigance (played by Sebastian Arcelus), in this thrilling, iconic courtroom drama. Skerritt joins the previously announced Sebastian Arcelus, Chike Johnson, Patrick Page, Tony Award® winner Tonya Pinkins, Fred Dalton Thompson, John Douglas Thompson, and Ashley Williams plus Dashiell Eaves, J.R. Horne, John Procaccino, Tijuana Ricks, and Lee Sellars. Casting is now complete. A Time to Kill is set to open on Broadway on October 20, 2013 at the John Golden Theatre (252 West 45th Street). Ethan McSweeny will direct, with previews beginning September 28th. For more info, visit www.ATimeToKillOnBroadway.com.

“We are so thrilled to welcome the enormously gifted Tom Skerritt to this production of A Time to Kill,” said Ms. Roth and Ms. Price in a statement. “His uncanny mixture of warmth, command and intelligence have been on display throughout his remarkable, decades-spanning career, and will undoubtedly bring our Lucien Wilbanks to vivid life on Broadway this fall.”

Tom Skerritt is perhaps best known for his Emmy Award® winning performance on the acclaimed CBS drama series “Picket Fences” and is regarded as one of the most versatile, acclaimed, and instantly recognizable American actors of both film and television. He made his feature film debut in War Hunt and went on to memorably star in films such as M*A*S*H, The Turning Point (Best Supporting Actor, National Board of Review), Alien, A River Runs Through It, Steel Magnolias, Top Gun, and Contact, among many others, and will next be seen in the independent film Field of Lost Shoes as ‘Ulysses S. Grant’. For television, he has appeared on “Brothers & Sisters,” “Leverage,” and “Cheers,” to name but a few; and also directed episodes of “Picket Fences,” “Chicago Hope,” and USA’s “Divided by Hate,” in which he also starred. For theater, he has appeared in Los Angeles and Seattle productions of the play Love Letters and as the Stage Manager in the Intiman Theatre production of Our Town directed by Bartlett Sher. Skerritt co-founded The Film School in Seattle and founded the non-profit Red Badge Project to teach storytelling
to active PTS military personnel at Fort Lewis Madigan Hospital in Tacoma, Washington. A Time to Kill marks his Broadway debut.

“For almost a quarter of a century, A Time to Kill has captivated readers with its raw exploration of race, retribution and justice,” said John Grisham in a previous statement. “It was my first book and the first that I have allowed to be adapted for the theatre. Rupert Holmes did an excellent job of translating it from the page to the stage, and I am happy that not only my loyal readers, but a whole new audience will be able to experience this story in live theatre. I am looking forward to opening night on Broadway!”

The casting breakdown is as follows: Sebastian Arcelus as Jake Brigance; Dashiell Eaves as Pete Willard/DR Musgrove; J.R. Horne as Mr. Pate; Chike Johnson as Ozzie Walls, Patrick Page as Rufus Buckley; Tonya Pinkins as Gwen Hailey; John Procaccino as Drew Tyndale/WT Bass; Tijuana Ricks as Court Reporter; Tom Skerritt as Lucien Wilbanks; Lee Sellars as Cobb/Rhodeheaver/Grist; Fred Dalton Thompson as Judge Noose; John Douglas Thompson as Carl Lee Hailey; and Ashley Williams as Ellen Roark.

The design team for A Time to Kill features scenic design by James Noone, costume design by Tony Award® nominee David C. Woolard, lighting design by Tony Award® winner Jeff Croiter, original music and sound design by Lindsay Jones, and projection design by Jeff Sugg.

A Time to Kill, the popular courtroom drama, tells the emotionally charged, now-iconic story of a young, idealistic lawyer, Jake Brigance, defending a black man, Carl Lee Hailey, for taking the law into his own hands following an unspeakable crime committed against his young daughter. Their small Mississippi town is thrown into upheaval, and Jake finds himself arguing against the formidable district attorney, Rufus Buckley, and under attack from both sides of a racially divided city. This drama is a thrilling courtroom battle where the true nature of what is right and what is moral are called into question.

John Grisham is one of the best-selling authors of all time, having written some of the most popular legal thrillers in the history of publishing, beginning in 1988 with A Time to Kill. Since then, he has written a novel a year, amassing 275 million books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 40 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, Grisham was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi, law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby—writing his first novel. Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn’t have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.

The multihyphenate Rupert Holmes has made his mark across various mediums, as playwright, composer, orchestrator, songwriter, mystery writer, and television writer. He won the 1986 Tony® Awards for Best Book and Best Score for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which in 2013 received an acclaimed, Tony-nominated revival at the Roundabout. Drood also represents one of two prestigious Edgar Awards for Holmes, who also won this foremost honor for mystery writing for his Broadway play Accomplice. He also received Tony nominations for 2003 Best Play for Say Goodnight Gracie and 2007 Best Book of a Musical and Best Score for Kander & Ebb’s Curtains. An accomplished mystery writer, his first novel Where the Truth Lies (Nero Wolfe nominee, Best American Mystery Novel) was adapted for the cinema by renowned filmmaker Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), and stars Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. He has also written the best-selling mystery Swing and the upcoming crime series for Simon & Schuster, The McMasters Guide to Homicide. His other stage credits include Broadway’s Solitary Confinement; the Washington, D.C. staging of A Time to Kill at Arena Stage; The Nutty Professor at TPAC; Robin and the 7 Hoods at The Old Globe; and Marty at Huntington. For television, he created, wrote and scored AMC’s original series “Remember WENN.”

Director Ethan McSweeny made his mark on New York with his breakout 1998 production of John Logan’s Never the Sinner, which won Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, followed by his Broadway debut with the revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, which received a 2001 Tony Award® nomination for Best Revival of a Play. His other notable New York credits include the premieres of Kate Fodor’s Rx (Primary Stages) and 100 Saints You Should Know (Playwrights Horizons), and Jason Grote’s 1001 (P73). His career has spanned a remarkably diverse body of work that includes more than 60 productions, from world premieres (1001, 100 Saints, and Trinity River Plays among others), to noted productions of classics (from Aeschylus’ The Persians to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice), to revivals from the American canon (including Miller’s A View from the Bridge, Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and Williams’ The Glass Menagerie) to musicals both new and old (Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days, and the upcoming Pirates of Penzance). Mr. McSweeny directed an earlier version of A Time to Kill at Arena Stage. He has directed on many of the nation’s most prestigious stages including the Guthrie, the Goodman, the Old Globe, the Shakespeare Theatre, the Denver Center, the Alley, Dallas Theater Center, South Coast Rep, CenterStage, Pittsburgh Public, George Street Playhouse, San Jose Rep, Westport Playhouse, the Wilma, Primary Stages, Playwrights Horizons, and the National Actors Theatre, among others.

Daryl Roth just received the 2013 Tony® Award for Best Musical for her hit production of Kinky Boots. She holds the singular distinction of producing seven Pulitzer Prize-winning plays: August: Osage County (Tony Award), Proof (Tony Award), Wit, How I Learned to Drive, Anna in the Tropics, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, and Clybourne Park (Tony Award). Over 85 Award-winning productions including: Love, Loss, and What I Wore; The Baby Dance; Bea Arthur on Broadway; Camping with Henry and Tom; Caroline, or Change; A Catered Affair; Closer Than Ever; Curtains; De La Guarda; Defying Gravity; Die Mommie Die!; The Divine Sister; Driving Miss Daisy; Fela!; Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? (Tony Award); Irena’s Vow; A Little Night Music; Manuscript; Medea; The Normal Heart (Tony Award); Old Wicked Songs; One Man, Two Guvnors; Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby; Salome; Snakebit; The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife; The Temperamentals; Thom Pain…; Through the Night; Thurgood; Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992; Vigil; War Horse (Tony Award); Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; The Year of Magical Thinking; and the documentary film My Dog: An Unconditional Love Story.

Eva Price was most recently represented on Broadway by Peter and the Starcatcher, which won 5 Tony Awards during its celebrated run and now continues Off-Broadway at New World Stages. Broadway: Annie (2013 Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Musical), Lewis Black, Franke Valli and the Four Seasons, Kathy Griffin Wants A Tony, Colin Quinn Long Story Short, The Merchant of Venice, The Addams Family, Wishful Drinking, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Selected Off-Broadway and Touring: Forever Dusty, Voca People, Ella, The Magic School Bus Live!, ‘S Wonderful. Eva was recently named to Crain’s New York “40 Under Forty” Rising Stars in Business and Blouin Art Info’s “Top 25 Under 35” Emerging Broadway Players.

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