Quiet on 47th Street, Julia Roberts's Small Mouth Sounds Starts Early

Small Mouth Sounds, the Bess Wohl play that brings Julia Roberts back to Broadway with Paul Rudd and Sarah Paulson, now begins previews Wednesday, February 10, 2027, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, eight days earlier than first announced.

Opening night moves up a week too, to Thursday, March 11. Playbill reported the new dates on Friday, October 23. Tickets went on sale to the public on Sunday morning, October 25, through Telecharge, BroadwayWorld reports.

The Barrymore sits at 243 West 47th Street, just west of Broadway. Come February, it hosts a play in which almost nobody is allowed to talk.

What Is Small Mouth Sounds About?

It is a comedy about six strangers on a silent retreat. They arrive at a spiritual retreat upstate hoping to fix their lives, and the vow of silence does not hold up well against what they brought with them. The production's own site sums it up as a search for calm that finds chaos instead.

The play has almost no dialogue. Jonathan Mandell of New York Theater, who reviewed the Off-Broadway run, makes the same point in his weekly news roundup. Most of the story lives in looks, sighs, and the small noises people make when they are trying very hard to be quiet.

Ars Nova, the Off-Broadway company, gave the play its world premiere in 2015, with Rachel Chavkin directing, according to Playbill. Joe Mantello, a three-time Tony winner, directs the Broadway version.

Who Is in the Cast?

Six actors, most of them famous for something else. Julia Roberts, the Oscar winner, leads the company with Paul Rudd, Sarah Paulson, Martin Freeman, Greta Lee and Isaac Powell.

Playbill fills in the stage histories. Roberts and Rudd last shared a Broadway stage in 2006, in Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre. Paulson won her Tony in 2024 for Appropriate. Lee made her Broadway debut in 2007 in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Powell's credits include Once on This Island and West Side Story. Freeman, the British screen actor, makes his Broadway debut.

The cast all released statements with the date change. Roberts's was short and direct.

"I could not be any more excited to reunite with Joe Mantello on this beautiful piece by Bess Wohl."

Lee's was shorter. "I'm back in NYC baby!" she said in the Playbill announcement.

Wohl wrote the play years before her biggest season. Her Liberation won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony for Best Play, Playbill notes. "I can't wait to welcome new audiences to the retreat," she said.

The Calendar, by Our Count

The move is small on paper. This is Suite 646's own arithmetic from the announced dates.

The first preview moves from Thursday, February 18 to Wednesday, February 10, which is 8 days earlier. Opening night moves from Thursday, March 18 to Thursday, March 11, which is 7 days earlier. Playbill's original casting story, from September 8, carried the February 18 and March 18 dates.

Three Days of Rain, the last Broadway play Roberts and Rudd did together, closed on June 18, 2006, according to Playbill's listing. The new first preview falls 20 years and almost 8 months after that closing. The play itself will have taken 12 years to get from Ars Nova to Broadway.

There is also a coincidence on the new calendar. February 10, 2027 is the same night Jonathan Groff begins performances of The Amish Project at the Broadhurst, on West 44th Street. Two of the season's starriest plays will have their first audiences on the same Wednesday.

And Three Days of Rain will be back on Broadway first. Its revival, with a new cast, starts January 30 at the Longacre, as we reported in our story on David Corenswet's Broadway debut.

What to Know Before You Go

Tickets are sold through Telecharge.com or by phone at 212-239-6200, according to the show's site. No prices were given in the new announcement. The production calls the run a strictly limited engagement and has not set a closing date.

The producers are Scott Rudin and Barry Diller, who also produce Mantello's current Broadway staging of Bruce Norris's Downstate at the Booth, Playbill reports. In September, Downstate ticket buyers were offered a presale code for Small Mouth Sounds seats at $250 each.

The creative team includes set designer Chloe Lamford, lighting designer Jack Knowles, sound designer Tom Gibbons and composer Caroline Shaw, the Pulitzer winner.

For a play about saying nothing, it has a lot of names on the marquee. On West 47th Street in February, the loudest thing in the room will be the silence.