Out East on 47th Street, Laura Linney's Montauk Gets a New Director

Laura Linney's next Broadway play has a new director. Daniel Sullivan, 86, is retiring and will not stage David Hare's Montauk for Manhattan Theatre Club, Playbill reported on Friday, October 30, and Jonathan Kent takes over.

Nothing else moves. The world premiere still starts previews on Tuesday, March 30, 2027, and opens on Monday, April 19, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on West 47th Street.

Why Is Daniel Sullivan Leaving Montauk?

Because he is done. Sullivan is ending a 55-year career, according to Playbill's report by Logan Culwell-Block. He directed 20 productions for Manhattan Theatre Club, including the original Proof, which won him the Tony Award in 2001.

He said it plainly. "I feel it's time for me to step into a well-earned retirement," Sullivan said in the announcement, adding that he was "proudly passing the directorial honors of David Hare's new play to Jonathan Kent."

Lynne Meadow, the company's former artistic director, paid him the compliment that matters most in a theater. "There is no director with whom I have worked more closely than the great Dan Sullivan," she said, Playbill reports.

Montauk will be Linney's sixth production in the building at 261 West 47th Street.

Linney is part of that history. Four of Sullivan's productions at the club starred her, according to Best of Theatre. So the change costs the actress a director she has worked with again and again. Hare sounded the same note. "It's a sadness for me that Dan is retiring, but no-one could step into his huge shoes better than Jonathan Kent," Hare said.

Who Is Jonathan Kent?

He is a British director with a long Hare résumé. Kent co-founded the Almeida in London as a full-time producing theater in 1990 and ran it jointly until 2002, Best of Theatre reports. With Hare he made The Rules of the Game, Peter Gynt and the Young Chekhov trilogy of Platonov, Ivanov and The Seagull, which began at Chichester and moved to the National Theatre.

He also knows this building. Kent directed The Height of the Storm at Wyndham's in the West End and then brought it to Broadway with Manhattan Theatre Club. Playbill also lists Faith Healer among his credits.

"I cannot wait to explore this extraordinary piece together in the rehearsal room," Kent said.

What Is Montauk About?

It is a play about art and what it costs the people who make it. Linney plays Roxy Margaux, an essayist whose books about difficult modern art have become bestsellers. She goes to the studio of Jared Speight, an abstract painter who made his name with an early success and has lived alone and bitter on the far end of Long Island ever since, according to Best of Theatre and the company's Montauk page. The relationship tests both of them, professionally and romantically, Playbill says.

Nobody has been cast as the painter yet. Further casting is still to be announced.

The title does the geography. Montauk is the last stop on the South Fork, a long way from a Midtown stage door. Hare is putting the far end of Long Island at the heart of the Theater District.

How Many Times Has Linney Played This House?

Often. By Suite 646's count from her published stage credits, Montauk will be Linney's sixth production in the building at 261 West 47th Street. She played Sight Unseen there in 2004, when it was still called the Biltmore, then Time Stands Still in 2010, The Little Foxes in 2017, My Name Is Lucy Barton in 2020 and Summer, 1976 in 2023.

The house took its current name in 2008, when it was dedicated to the Broadway publicist Samuel J. Friedman, and Manhattan Theatre Club has run it since it reopened in 2003, according to the theater's history.

Linney, born in Manhattan and trained at Juilliard, has five Tony nominations and no win, four of them for plays at this address. Her most recent, for My Name Is Lucy Barton, came in 2020.

New Yorkers who want a Broadway fall with big names already have plenty, from Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Sunlit Rooms to the rest of the season. Montauk is the spring.

What to Know Before You Go

Previews start March 30, 2027, and opening night is April 19 at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street. Single tickets go on sale later this year, according to the club's page. Until then, seats are open only to its subscribers and patrons.

One detail on that page is out of date. As of Friday its creative team still listed Sullivan as director, while the header already named Kent.

A painter at the end of the island, a writer at his door, and a new man in the director's chair. The trip out east starts in Midtown.