There seems to be a secret ingredient to stage success this season: a stint on “Succession.”
So many “Succession” alums are onstage in New York and London that the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, has been dashing from theater to theater, trying to catch the work of his colleagues. On a recent trip to New York, he saw four shows featuring “Succession” alums, including a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” one of the hottest tickets on Broadway thanks to its star performer, Jeremy Strong, and “The Effect,” an Off Broadway play written by Lucy Prebble, who is also among the producers and writers of “Succession.” In London, Armstrong saw “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a critically-acclaimed, one-woman adaptation of the Oscar Wilde classic starring Sarah Snook, and is booked to see “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” starring Brian Cox.
“We took a lot from New York theater,” Armstrong said, nodding to the many stage actors and playwrights who helped make “Succession” a success, “and I hope this season we are giving something back.”
Arian Moayed, who played the investor Stewy Hosseini in “Succession” and starred in a Broadway revival of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” last year, theorized that the show had some theater-like attributes. “Part of what was cool about the show was that we shot it in a very one-act-y kind of way,” said Moayed. There are so many “Succession” alums onstage that one small downtown theater company in New York, Bedlam, advertised its current show, “The Assassination of Julius Caesar as told by William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw,” as “STARRING NO ONE FROM SUCCESSION.”
Here is a look at where the Roys and their retainers are onstage now.
Brian Cox
Strong has been acting for years, but his portrayal of Kendall Roy, an angstily ambitious son of Logan Roy, introduced him to a much wider audience. Now Strong is making a hit of the Broadway revival of “An Enemy of the People,” in which he stars as Dr. Thomas Stockmann, a moralizing physician who discovers contaminants in the local spa water.
Sarah Snook
Snook’s solo turn in a technology-rich “The Picture of Dorian Gray” has been hailed as a tour-de-force performance — she plays not only the title role but also all 25 other parts. The West End production is expected eventually to transfer to Broadway. In “Succession,” she played Logan Roy’s strategic daughter, Shiv.
One of the Off Broadway hits of the season, “Job,” was a two-hander starring Peter Friedman, who played Frank Vernon, the Waystar RoyCo chief operating officer, and Sydney Lemmon, who had a modest role in the television show as well. The producers of “Job,” which had a sold-out commercial run downtown, are now exploring a possible Broadway transfer.
Juliana Canfield
Juliana Canfield played Kendall Roy’s assistant Jess in “Succession.” Now she is making her Broadway debut with one of the leading roles in “Stereophonic,” a behind-the-music play that drew strong reviews during an Off Broadway run.
Natalie Gold
Natalie Gold had a small but memorable role in “Succession” as Kendall Roy’s ex-wife, Rava. She is now performing on Broadway in “Appropriate,” a play about a Southern family with troubling secrets; she plays Rachael, a daughter-in-law of the family’s recently deceased patriarch. The play has an enormously successful Broadway run presented by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater that began last fall; it has just begun a second Broadway chapter, moving to the Belasco from the Hayes for a commercial run.
