The actress who will fill Condola Rashad’s shoes in “The Trip to Bountiful” has been revealed: Adepero Oduye.
Producers of the Tony Award-nominated revival said recently that Oduye, who co-starred with Rashad in last year’s TV remake of “Steel Magnolias,” will take over the part of Thelma this week.
Rashad, who has left to prepare for the upcoming Broadway production of “Romeo and Juliet” opposite Orlando Bloom, gave her final performance on Sunday. Oduye takes over when the show next resumes on Tuesday at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre.
Oduye is best known for her acclaimed breakout role in Dee Ree’s Sundance film, “Pariah,” playing a 17-year-old Brooklyn girl who’s struggling to come out as a lesbian as her family crumbles. She will also be seen in the upcoming film, “Twelve Years a Slave,” directed by Steven McQueen.
The Cornell University graduate will be making her Broadway debut, joining Tony winner Cicely Tyson, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Williams and Tom Wopat. Rashad earned a Tony nomination playing the part of Thelma.
The play is about a widow who shares a cramped two-room apartment in Houston in 1953 with her devoted son and overbearing daughter-in-law. Her only desire is to revisit her old home in Bountiful and recapture the vitality and purpose she seemed to lose when she left for the big city decades ago.
