14 Nov 2014 9:42 AM PT
Rory O’Malley Image: Repost from Broadway World.com
Roundabout Theatre Company has announced that four-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner Jim Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory,” Roundabout’s Harvey) will be joined by Brooks Ashmanskas (Jeff Baird), Tracee Chimo (Tessie Kearns), John Cullum (Amos G. Gashwiler), Richard Easton (J. Lester Montague), Katie Finneran (Beulah Baxter), Randy Graff (Casting Director), Richard Kind (Sigmund Rosenblatt), Rory O’Malley (Elmer Huff), Debra Jo Rupp (Mrs. Patterson), Peter Scolari (Weller) and David Turner (Harold Parmalee) in a hilarious one-night-only reading of George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly’s Merton of the Movies. This rollicking evening will be helmed by Roundabout’s Adams Associate Artistic Director, six-time Tony nominee Scott Ellis (Roundabout’s Harvey, The Mystery of Edwin Drood), currently represented on Broadway with The Elephant Man and You Can’t Take It With You. Final casting to be announced.
The reading will take place on Monday, December 1 at 7:00PM at Studio 54 (254 West 54th Street). Each year, Roundabout produces a star-studded benefit reading to support its many programs. Past readings have included Intimate Apparel, Assassins, She Loves Me and A Little Night Music.
It’s the golden era of silent motion pictures, and no one loves them more than Merton Gill (Parsons), a naïve store clerk from a small town in Illinois. After taking an acting class-and determined to become a great dramatic actor-Merton uses his life’s savings to head to Hollywood. There’s only one problem: he can’t act. When a plucky young starlet and a manipulative movie executive see how inadvertently funny Merton’s earnest efforts are, they cast him in a comedy (that they tell him is a drama) and hilarity.