Theater News

Meet American Horror Story‘s Sarah Paulson and Tony Nominee Danny Burstein, the Stars of Talley’s Folly

Roundabout Theatre Company’s new off-Broadway production of Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama begins February 8.

Sarah Paulson and Danny Burstein star as the unlikely lovers Sarah Talley and Matt Friedman.
Sarah Paulson and Danny Burstein star as the unlikely lovers Sarah Talley and Matt Friedman.
(© David Gordon)

Tony nominee Danny Burstein (currently of Broadway’s Golden Boy) and Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) will inhabit the World War II-landscape of Lanford Wilson’s Talley’s Folly beginning February 8. Roundabout Theatre Company’s off-Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama is directed by Michael Wilson (The Orphans’ Home Cycle) and runs through April 28 at the Laura Pels Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre.

Burstein, who plays Matt Friedman, is currently starring as a boxing trainer in Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy. He received Tony Award nominations for his performances as Buddy Plummer in Follies (a role for which he won a Drama Desk Award), Luther Billis in South Pacific, and Aldolpho in The Drowsy Chaperone. His many other Broadway credits include Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, A Class Act, Titanic, Company, and The Seagull.

Paulson, who takes on the role of Sally Talley, currently appears as Lana Winters on the FX series American Horror Story: Asylum. She also guest-starred as psychic Billie Dean Howard during the show’s first season. Her Broadway credits include Collected Stories and The Glass Menagerie, and her many off-Broadway appearances include Still Life, Crimes of the Heart, Colder Than Here, and Killer Joe. Paulson’s additional stage and screen work includes the series’ Jack and Jill, Nip/Tuck, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and the HBO film Game Change.

Set in a Missouri boathouse on July 4, 1944, the one-act, two-character play follows the unlikely romance of Jewish immigrant Matt and Protestant-born Sally. Matt has returned to Missouri to ask Sally’s hand in marriage after a brief meeting the previous summer. The drama is one of three plays in a cycle that also includes Fifth of July and Talley & Son. Wilson’s many plays also include Burn This, Lemon Sky, Balm in Gilead, and The Hot l Baltimore.

Click here for more information and tickets to Talley’s Folly.

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Talley’s Folly

Closed: May 5, 2013