Casting News -- July 1, 2009

Laura Linney will star in Manhattan Theatre Club's upcoming New York premiere of Time Stands Still on Broadway. The play is written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies and directed by Tony winner Daniel Sullivan (Linney was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in Sight Unseen, a previous MTC production that was also written by Margulies and directed by Sullivan). Performances begin Jan. 5, 2010, before a limited engagement opens Jan. 28, 2010 at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hutcherson, and Mia Wasikowska are set to star in The Kids Are Alright, an indie film about a brother and sister (Hutcherson and Wasikowska) who set out to find their same-sex parents' sperm donor. Bening and Moore play their parents; Ruffalo plays the donor, who disrupts the family dynamic once he enters their lives.

Charlie Day and Christina Applegate have joined the cast of Going the Distance, a romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long as a couple trying to maintain a long-distance relationship. Day (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) will play Long's best friend; Applegate will play Barrymore's sister.

Liza Minnelli and Delta Burke will play dueling sisters on an episode of Lifetime's upcoming legal dramedy Drop Dead Diva. Minnelli will play a psychic who takes her sister Burke to court after she opens a competing psychic shop directly across the street from her store. The new series is about "a vapid model who dies in a sudden accident only to be reborn in the body of a brilliant, plus-size attorney." Drop Dead Diva premieres July 12; Minelli and Burke's episode will air Sept. 20, and also features an appearance by Rosie O'Donnell as a judge.

Casting is now complete for the upcoming production of the musical Godspell. The cast includes Eric Kunze as Jesus and Demond Green as Judas/John the Baptist, as well as Uzo Aduba, Adam Kantor, Chelsea Krombach, Tracy McDowell, Orville Mendoza, Ruth Pferdihirt, Rashida Scott, and Chris Spaulding. The production runs July 13-19 at the St. Louis Muny, the nation's oldest and largest outdoor theatre.

Don Richards has joined the cast of The Manhattan Boys, a web series about two New York friends, Eddie and Bruce, as they tour the country in a theater for young audiences educational musical called A Mother's Choice. Richards, who is currently in the second national tour of Wicked, will play "the inappropriately miscast understudy Horace Vladimir" in the internet series. The series also stars creator Kevin Samuel Yee (Mary Poppins, Mamma Mia!, Wicked) as Eddie and Charles Hagerty (Les Miserables, The Fantasticks, Wicked) as Bruce.

Model/actress Sarah Bradford has been cast in the horror film When The Devil Comes. The cast also includes Dechen Thurman, Patrick McMullan, and Liam McMullan.

-- Daniel Lehman