Todd Haynes

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.) – On Tuesday, July 24, 2012, at 6:45 pm, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Todd Haynes will be present for a pre-show discussion about his film Far From Heaven — on which the musical by the same title currently running in a preview production at Williamstown Theatre Festival is based — outside on the lawn of the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance.  Admission is free to Haynes’s talk.

Far From Heaven is a new musical based on the acclaimed, award-winning 2002 Focus Features/Vulcan Productions motion picture written and directed by Haynes, who is also known for such music-oriented feature films as Velvet Goldmine and the Bob Dylan-based fantasy, I’m Not There. It features a book by Tony Award-winner Richard Greenberg and an original score by the Tony nominated team of Scott Frankel (music) and Michael Korie (lyrics).  The show is directed by Michael Greif (Next to Normal, Rent), and will receive a run at Playwrights Horizons in New York City in Spring 2013.

In Far From Heaven, Cathy Whitaker (O’Hara) seems to be the picture-perfect wife and mother in 1957 suburban Connecticut. But roiling beneath the surface, secret longings and forbidden desires cause her world to unravel — with incendiary consequences.