Jessica Chastain is heading back to Broadway for Lost Lear, a new play that uses Shakespeare’s King Lear as both a theatrical touchstone and part of its central dramatic situation. The limited engagement is scheduled for the Booth Theatre, with previews set to begin March 29, 2027 and an opening night planned for April 23. The production is due to run for 16 weeks.
Chastain will play Joy, a middle-aged former actress living with early onset dementia. In the play’s premise, Joy’s clearest remaining memory is of performing King Lear. As her grasp on the present changes, she becomes convinced that she is once again in rehearsal for Shakespeare’s tragedy.
That setup makes Lost Lear a meta-theatrical work: a story in which acting, rehearsal and a famous existing play are not merely references, but elements that shape what the characters can say to one another. The production does not simply stage King Lear; it places the idea of staging it inside a new family drama.
A family visit becomes a scene to be played
Corey Stoll will co-star as Conor, Joy’s estranged son. He arrives prepared to say things that have gone unspoken for years, but the play’s premise places a difficult condition on that conversation: if Conor wants Joy to receive what he is trying to tell her, he must enter the reality she is inhabiting and take part in the scene she believes is underway.
Michael Urie will play Joy’s nurse. Rather than attempting to force a single fixed scenario, the nurse follows Joy’s cues and takes on whatever role she needs him to play. That detail gives the production a three-person structure with sharply different relationships to performance. Joy experiences the Shakespearean rehearsal as immediate; the nurse adapts to it as care; and Conor must decide how far he can step into it to reach his mother.
The announced material frames memory as something theatrical and unstable rather than a straightforward mechanism for revealing information. Joy’s connection to King Lear may offer a route toward recognition, but it also means her son’s visit has to unfold through roles, language and emotional circumstances that are not entirely his own.
Why ‘King Lear’ matters to the premise
King Lear is a Shakespeare tragedy centered on an aging ruler and his daughters, with family division, authority and fraught declarations of love at its core. Lost Lear does not need to reproduce that story for the allusion to carry weight. Its stated setup already puts an estranged child and parent in a situation where communication is hard, where performance becomes necessary, and where the past remains forcefully present.
That is the practical value of the play-within-the-play device. It gives Conor a framework through which he may be able to speak to Joy when a direct conversation cannot proceed on ordinary terms. At the same time, it introduces tension: playing along is not the same as resolving a relationship, and the show’s premise leaves room for the demands of the imagined rehearsal to alter what is possible in the real encounter.
The title also signals that the Shakespeare connection is deliberately indirect. Joy is not described as playing Lear in a conventional revival. Instead, the story concerns an actress whose sense of time and identity is bound to a production of King Lear, making the classic text part of the world through which she understands the people around her.
Chastain’s first Broadway outing in a new production
Lost Lear marks Chastain’s return to Broadway after her role in the 2023 revival of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. It is also her first Broadway appearance in a new show rather than a revival. That distinction matters because a revival begins with an established script and performance history, while a new play is still defining the specific shape it will take in front of Broadway audiences.
The creative team has paired Chastain with two actors whose Broadway work is already familiar to theatergoers. Stoll’s credits include Appropriate. Urie’s Broadway credits include Once Upon a Mattress and Spamalot. Additional casting has not yet been announced.
For audiences, the compactly announced central cast also clarifies where the story’s dramatic focus will sit. Joy, Conor and the nurse are not peripheral figures surrounding a larger ensemble conflict; their changing interactions appear to be the engine of the production. Any further casting announcements will add context, but the relationship between those three roles is already explicit in the premise.
Dan Colley writes and directs his Broadway debut
Dan Colley wrote Lost Lear and will direct the Broadway production, marking his Broadway directing debut. The work was first developed and performed in Ireland in 2022. It has subsequently been staged in New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland and Scotland before its planned Broadway arrival.
That earlier production history means the Broadway run is not the play’s first encounter with an audience, but it remains a notable new stage for the work. A workshop is a developmental setting in which a play can be explored and performed as it is being shaped; the later productions indicate that Lost Lear has continued beyond that original stage of development in several countries.
“I never imagined, when we first made ‘Lost Lear,’ that it would one day be on Broadway — and I’ve imagined some pretty wild things,” Colley said. “I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to share this piece with New York audiences and to discover new facets of the work through collaborating with this remarkable company of artists.”
Colley’s combined role as writer and director puts the original author at the helm of this Broadway staging. That does not tell audiences exactly how the production will look or sound, but it does establish a direct connection between the script’s conception and its presentation at the Booth Theatre.
What has been confirmed for the 2027 engagement
- Venue: Booth Theatre on Broadway.
- First preview: March 29, 2027.
- Opening night: April 23, 2027.
- Run: a limited 16-week engagement.
- Joy: Jessica Chastain.
- Conor: Corey Stoll.
- Joy’s nurse: Michael Urie.
- Writer and director: Dan Colley.
A limited engagement means the production is planned for a defined run rather than being announced as an open-ended Broadway booking. The 16-week window gives the event a clear schedule, though the information currently available does not include ticket details, performance times, design credits or the rest of the company.
There is an especially New York-facing dimension to the announcement, given the location and the play’s focus on an actor returning to a foundational role. Theater audiences considering a spring 2027 trip can also keep an eye on the broader city calendar; Joking Joystick has separately covered a possible April 2027 festival plan in Raleigh, another example of how far ahead major live-event schedules can begin to take shape.
A drama about the rules people use to reach each other
The announced story of Lost Lear has a simple but emotionally demanding proposition. Conor comes to speak honestly to his mother, while Joy cannot meet him entirely in the present he expects. The nurse understands that Joy’s world is governed by different immediate rules and adapts his role accordingly. Conor, then, faces a question that is both theatrical and personal: whether he can use a performance as a bridge without treating the encounter as less real.
By making Joy a former actress and rooting her most durable memory in Shakespeare, the play gives that question a specific dramatic form. The rehearsal is a setting, a memory and a means of connection all at once. With Chastain, Stoll and Urie in the announced principal roles, Lost Lear is positioned as an intimate Broadway event built around family, care and the complicated possibility that a role can sometimes make honesty easier to hear.
