Jessica Chastain Returns to Broadway in Spring 2027 in New Play Lost Lear
Jessica Chastain will return to Broadway next spring in a limited engagement, meaning a run with a set end date rather than an open-ended one. Deadline reported the casting and schedule for the new play Lost Lear, written by Dan Colley.
The show will play a 16-week run at the Booth Theatre. Performances begin on March 29, 2027, and opening night is set for April 23, 2027. Chastain last appeared on Broadway in the revival of A Doll's House.
Chastain plays Joy, a former actress who believes she is back in rehearsal for King Lear. Corey Stoll plays Joy's estranged son, Conor, and Michael Urie plays Joy's nurse. The play is about a woman whose memory and sense of time are slipping, and the family members who must decide how to handle it.
The producers are Seaview, MarketStall and Mass Productions, with Pam Hurst-Della Pietra and Stephen Della Pietra. Colley directs the production as well as writing it, according to Deadline. It is his first Broadway play.
Lost Lear has been on the road for some time before this announcement. It premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2022, and it has since toured the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. In 2025 it won the Scotsman Fringe First award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it was presented at the Traverse Theatre.
For anyone who has not followed Broadway closely, a few terms help. A Broadway show is run as a small business. Its backers put up the money to open the doors, which is called capitalization. The show has "recouped" once it has earned back that cost. Tickets sold ahead of time for future performances are called the advance, and it is one of the first numbers producers watch once a show is on sale.
Limited engagements like this one come with a fixed closing date from the start. Sixteen weeks is a set window, and the show's sales in that window decide how the run is judged on the ledger.
Spring 2027 is also when many Broadway productions open, ahead of the cutoff for the Tony Awards. The Tony eligibility window, which decides which shows can compete in a given season, is a date that producers plan around. The opening date for Lost Lear falls in that stretch.
