NEW YORK – Audra McDonald is going from host of the Tony Awards to another stage role.
The six-time Tony-winner will return to Broadway in the play “Ohio State Murders” by Adrienne Kennedy, directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon. Dates and the creative team will be announced later.
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The play takes the form of a lecture given by the character Suzanne Alexander, a well-known African American writer who has accepted an invitation to return to her alma mater, Ohio State University, to talk about her work. It twists into a murder mystery that unfolds over the course of the lecture Alexander rehearses late at night deep in the stacks of the Ohio State University library.
Kennedy will make her Broadway debut with this production at age 90.
Originally commissioned by Great Lakes Theatre Festival in Cleveland, “Ohio State Murders” received its world premiere there in 1992 staring Ruby Dee, a year after a workshop production at the Yale Repertory Theatre.
McDonald won a Tony in 2014 playing Billie Holiday in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill.” She also won Tonys for “Carousel,” ”’Master Class,” ”’Ragtime,” ”‘A Raisin in the Sun,” and “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.”