Stop the Presses, Goldsberry and Fontana Read His Girl Friday Uptown

Renée Elise Goldsberry and Santino Fontana will lead a one-night reading of the 1940 screwball comedy His Girl Friday at Symphony Space on Wednesday, December 2, at 7 p.m., Playbill reports.

Broadway at 95th Street is a long way from a city room. For one night it gets the noise of one anyway. Typewriters, telephones, a deadline, and two people who used to be married and still talk faster than anyone else in the building.

What Is His Girl Friday?

His Girl Friday is Howard Hawks's 1940 film about hard-boiled reporters, hapless con men and a love triangle. Charles Lederer adapted it from The Front Page, the newspaper play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.

The film's great trick was a gender swap. In the play, the star reporter Hildy Johnson is a man. On screen, Hildy became a woman, played by Rosalind Russell, and her editor Walter Burns, played by Cary Grant, became her ex-husband. A newsroom farce turned into a remarriage comedy, and it never slowed down.

Two people who used to be married and still talk faster than anyone else in the building.

Symphony Space has not said who reads Hildy and who reads Walter. More casting is still to come, according to both Playbill and the Symphony Space event page, which also warns that casting may change.

Who Are the Two Leads?

Both are Tony winners, and both are New York stage regulars.

Goldsberry won her Tony in 2016 as Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton, according to her Wikipedia biography. Before that she was the last actress to play Mimi in the original Broadway run of Rent, and she was among the Rent alumni announced for the original company's 30th anniversary reunion this month, as we wrote at the time. Television viewers know her as Wickie Roy in Girls5eva. Last year she played the First Lady in the film A House of Dynamite.

Fontana won his Tony in 2019 for Tootsie, playing the actor who becomes Dorothy Michaels. He was Prince Topher in Cinderella on Broadway in 2013, and the same year he gave a voice to Hans, the charming prince in Frozen.

His New York résumé goes deeper than the hits. He won a Drama Desk Award for the 2009 Broadway revival of Brighton Beach Memoirs, took Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards for Sons of the Prophet Off-Broadway in 2011, and played Cornelius Hackl in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway in 2018.

He is also not a guest here. Playbill reports that Fontana is the At Play series' artistic advisor for the 2026 to 2027 season.

Why Do At Play Readings Matter?

At Play is Symphony Space's series of one-night readings, built as room for actors, playwrights and directors to revisit favorite works and try new ideas. Its record is the reason to pay attention.

The series opened with Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, directed by John Benjamin Hickey and starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, BroadwayWorld notes. That reading became a fully staged Broadway revival. Brendan Hunt wrote and starred in The Art Couple there. Fontana has since read David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre with BD Wong and Moss Hart's Light Up the Sky with Tony Shalhoub. Broderick, for his part, is still the kind of star who can reunite an entire Broadway company for one night.

Nobody has announced a future for this His Girl Friday beyond December 2. But a series that has already turned one reading into a Broadway run has earned some speculation.

What to Know Before You Go

The reading is Wednesday, December 2, at 7 p.m. in the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th Street. The event page lists a running time of about 90 minutes.

Tickets come in two tiers, according to Symphony Space. Tier 1 seats cost $57 to $60 and Tier 2 seats $47 to $50, plus a $5 service fee on every ticket. By Suite 646's arithmetic, that puts the real price between $52 and $65, or roughly 58 to 72 cents a minute for what Symphony Space bills as one of the greatest screenplays ever written.

The newsroom in the film runs on a deadline. So does this one. One night, then the presses stop.