Lawrence and Lee’s play was rejected by eight Broadway producers before coming to the attention of Margot Jones, a theater director and producer in Dallas, Texas. With Jones directing, Inherit the Wind premiered in Dallas on January 10, 1955, and received rave reviews. The Broadway rights were soon acquired by Herman Shumlin, and the play opened at Broadway’s National Theatre on April 21, 1955.[7] Shumlin directed, with actors Paul Muni, Ed Begley and Tony Randall in the cast. It played on Broadway until June 22, 1957, where it closed after 806 performances. It was revived on Broadway twice: April 4 – May 12, 1996 and April 12 – July 8, 2007.[8] The 1996 revival starred George C. Scott (who played Brady in the later 1999 film version) as Drummond and Charles Durning as Brady. In April, Scott had to leave the show mid-performance due to ill health and was replaced by the show's producer, Tony Randall, for that day. Randall played the Wednesday matinees for Scott from that point on.[9] His illness finally led to the revival's closure.[10] Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy starred in the 2007 revival.[11]
Other revivals
In the 1990s Jason Miller and Malachy McCourt starred in a Philadelphia production that broke that city's long run records.
In 2006 several scenes were translated to Italian for the first time by Luca Giberti for a series of Darwin-themed readings.[12]
Kevin Spacey (Henry Drummond) and David Troughton (Matthew Harrison Brady) starred in a 2009 revival at The Old Vic in London.[13]
In 2018, Chandan Sen directed the play for the first time in the Bengali language, renamed as A-Pabitra which starred actor Sabyasachi Chakraborty along with Asit Basu, Tandra Basu, Shantilal Mukherjee and Sen himself.[14]
In November 2023, a revival directed by Michael Michetti ran at the Pasadena Playhouse starring Alfred Molina (Drummond), John Douglas Thompson (Brady) and Chris Perfetti (Hornbeck).[15]
