Tilda Swinton will make her New York stage debut in February, returning to the solo play she first performed at the start of her career and bringing “Man to Man” to the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Manfred Karge’s drama begins performances Feb. 21, 2027, with an opening night Feb. 28 and a strictly limited eight-week run. Producers Brian and Dayna Lee, the Royal Court Theatre, Berliner Ensemble and Madison Wells Live announced the transfer Tuesday. Presale tickets go on sale Wednesday at 10 a.m. ET, followed by general sales Thursday.
Swinton, an Academy Award winner, plays Ella/Max, a role she originated in the play’s British premiere at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, which commissioned the first production in 1987 before it moved to London’s Royal Court in 1988. The story follows a woman in 1930s Germany who adopts her dead husband’s identity. As the synopsis puts it, she “puts on her dead husband’s trousers and never takes them off.” Her disguise carries her through hunger, war and dictatorship.
The New York run follows a revival at the Royal Court, where Swinton returned to the part in September. It marks her first appearance on stage since the original productions, and the staging reunites the creative team behind the first version: director Stephen Unwin and designer Bunny Christie, with a translation by Anthony Vivis that Unwin revised. Ben Ormerod handles lighting, Elena Peña sound and Matt Powell projection.
Audiences in London have called the monodrama demanding and sometimes divisive, but many have singled out Swinton’s physical commitment as its highlight. Ahead of New York, the production also plays limited engagements at the Traverse Theatre in Scotland and at the Berliner Ensemble in Germany, a route that returns the play to both the institutions that nurtured it and the language in which Karge wrote it.
The New York engagement adds a notable name to the Off-Broadway calendar. Swinton has built her screen career on roles that blur gender and identity, from “Orlando” to her recent work with Pedro Almodóvar and Luca Guadagnino. “Man to Man” gives her a one-person stage showcase for the same themes, now in front of New York audiences for the first time.
