Tulsa group to produce Grisham best-seller on Broadway
By MICHAEL SMITH World Scene Writer on Sep 17, 2013, at 9:36 AM
The Arts
Thomas Lanners first became acquainted with the music he will play Saturday night in Tulsa via a TV show.
Music by two revolutionary artists of the early 20th century will make up the program of the Signature Symphony's first concert of the season, 8 p.m. Saturday at the VanTrease PACE, 10300 E. 81st St.
Tulsa-based Square 1 Theatrics, Tony Award-winners earlier this year for the Broadway revival of "Pippin," will produce a stage version of author John Grisham's best-selling novel "A Time to Kill" for this fall, the company announced Tuesday.
Square 1, formed by Jay Krottinger and Ryan Tanner, will produce along with Daryl Roth, who has produced multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning plays including "August: Osage County," written by Tulsa native Tracy Letts.
This is the first work of Grisham's to be adapted for the stage. Previews are set for September on Broadway, with the official opening in October for this production adapted by Rupert Holmes.
"We knew we had to be a part of this effort," Tanner said in a press release. "There is no one involved with this project who does not believe in the power of this story and the importance of the questions it raises. Is there ever a right time to kill? What is justice?”
Grisham is quoted as saying, "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."
The 1996 box-office hit movie version of Grisham's book starred Matthew McConaughey as a lawyer defending a black man (Samuel L. Jackson) who took the law into his own hands after his daughter was raped and beaten. What follows is an explosive court case in a small Southern town divided by race and their ideas of justice.
The Arts
Thomas Lanners first became acquainted with the music he will play Saturday night in Tulsa via a TV show.
Music by two revolutionary artists of the early 20th century will make up the program of the Signature Symphony's first concert of the season, 8 p.m. Saturday at the VanTrease PACE, 10300 E. 81st St.
