By Jennifer R Jones | Posted on January 31, 2014 12:02 AM
Movie Star Bradley Cooper Returns To Broadway After An Eight-Year Hiatus In The Elephant Man Inspired By The Life Of John Merrick.
Bradley Cooper Returns To Broadway In "The Elephant Man"
Since last appearing on Broadway in the 2006 production of the Richard Greenberg play Three Days of Rain, Bradley Cooper has become a major movie star, gaining notoriety in The Hangover franchise and most recently starring in Oscar bait films Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle.
Soon Cooper will come back to Broadway, playing John Merrick in the 1979 drama The Elephant Man, penned by Bernard Pomerance. (The play was most recently revived on Broadway in a 2002 production featuring Billy Crudup.) He will be joined by co-stars Alessandro Nivola and Patricia Clarkson.
"The Elephant Man" Is Performed Without Prosthetic Makeup
Bradley Cooper previously starred in The Elephant Man in 2012 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The same director, Scott Ellis, will also helm this Broadway production. It is customary for the stage production of The Elephant Man to be performed without the aid of prosthetic makeup, instead the production will rely on the actors ability to simulate the characters severe disabilities.
This show has Best Play Tony written all over it. "The Elephant Man" story was inspired by the life of John Merrick, a man that suffered from a type of neurofibromatosis, a deforming nerve tissue disorder that produces skin and bone abnormalities. Much interest in the character has been seen following the David Lynch movie from 1980 that starred Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud and Wendy Hiller in which a Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak.
