Brow Beat

Amy Schumer and Keegan Michael-Key Will Star in Steve Martin’s New Broadway Play

Amy Schumer

Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for City Year Los Angeles

After months of speculation, the official cast for the Broadway run for Steve Martin’s play, Meteor Shower, has been announced, and it’s stacked.

Meteor Shower’s Broadway cast will include Amy Schumer, Keegan-Michael Key, Laura Benanti, and Alan Tudyk. The show will mark Schumer’s and Key’s Broadway debuts. Key can be seen this summer in Sam Gold’s Hamlet at the Public Theater, while Benanti is a Tony-winning Broadway veteran.

Rumors revolving around Martin courting both Schumer and Benanti to star in Meteor Shower began circulating in early June when all that was known about the play’s Broadway run was that Hello, Dolly!’s Jerry Zaks was attached to direct.

The play takes place over one unhinged night in 1993 in Ojai, California, and follows a husband and wife (Schumer and Tudyk) who invite another couple (Benanti and Key) over to their house for a night of food, conversation, and meteor shower-watching.

Meteor Shower premiered last fall at San Diego’s Old Globe, where it set the theater’s all-time sales record and had Jenna Fischer (The Office) in the headlining role. The show was a co-production with the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, which opened its own production of the show shortly after its run at the Old Globe ended.

The show garnered mixed reviews from critics, with Charles McNulty of the Los Angeles Times calling it “sitcom Ionesco crossed with a Saturday Night Live parody of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Martin is no stranger to the stage. Meteor Shower will be his second Broadway production following Bright Star, which enjoyed a short Broadway run in 2016 and garnered Martin two Tony nominations. However, out of nowhere, Martin lost in both categories for which he was nominated to an underdog production called Hamilton. Martin also wrote Picasso at the Lapin Agile in 1993, which had productions in multiple cities across the country. The legendary comedian also adapted Carl Sternheim’s Die Hose as The Underpants, which had an off-Broadway run in April of 2002. Martin also released a book of his full-length and short plays in 1997.

Meteor Shower is set to begin previews on November 1 at the Booth Theatre and will have its opening night on November 29.