Amy Schumer Is Making Her Broadway Debut This Fall

She's playing a married woman with a questionable interest in cannibalism.
Steve Granitz via Getty Images

Theater buffs and comedy nerds, mark your calendars. Amy Schumer is coming to Broadway.

The controversial stand-up comedian, movie star and author will make her theatrical debut this fall, starring in a new play called “Meteor Shower” written by Steve Martin.

Schumer will be joined by Laura Benanti, who won a Tony for her performance in “Gypsy,” Keegan-Michael Key, currently playing Horatio in The Public Theater’s production of “Hamlet,” and Alan Tudyk, who has starred in television series including “Firefly,” “Suburgatory” and “American Dad!”

The play debuted in 2016 at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater and subsequently ran at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater. It follows Corky and Norm, a married couple living in Ojai, California, in 1993. Schumer will play the role of Corky, who is described as having “a history of cannibalism (though nothing too macabre, thank heavens!)” ― whatever that means.

Things get weird when Corky and Norm invite a couple over for the weekend to watch a meteor shower. Both are “troubled and titillated” by their guests, whose sexually aggressive behavior reminds them of their own repressed desires. The loopy encounter examines the discrepancies between the couples’ interior and exterior selves and the dynamics of their marriages.

The play’s earlier performances received mixed reviews. As the Los Angeles Times’ Charles McNulty described: ”‘Meteor Shower’ plunges into the absurd without establishing a philosophical grounding for the mania. It’s sitcom Ionesco crossed with a ‘Saturday Night Live’ parody of Edward Albee’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’”

The role of Corky was originally played by Jenna Fischer, aka Pam from “The Office.” We imagine Schumer will work magic in the role of a kind-of cannibal wife with some serious repression issues.

“Meteor Shower,” directed by Jerry Zaks, is slated to begin previews Nov. 1 and open Nov. 29 at the Booth Theater in New York.

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