Canadians to join new Potter Broadway cast
Reid, Farber taking flight in smash hit next March at NYC’s Lyric Theatre
Two Canadians — one a veteran actress, one a recent Stratford Festival star — are joining the cast of Harry Potter and the
Cursed Child on Broadway. Fiona Reid and Sara Farb are part of the new cast announced on Thursday for the multiaward-winning smash hit.
A news release said they are appearing with the support of Actors’ Equity Association, but did not specify what roles they would play.
Reid was born in England, but raised in Toronto, and has a long list of theatre credits in this country, including appearances at the Stratford and Shaw festivals, Canadian Stage, Tarragon Theatre, Mirvish, the National Arts Centre and Soulpepper Theatre among others.
She is also known for movie and TV roles, including Cathy King on the 1970s sitcom King
of Kensington and the mother of the groom in the 2002 hit film My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Reid has also won two Dora Mavor Moore Awards, for Fallen Angels in 1993 and Six De
grees of Separation in 1995. She also won an Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award in 2011 for Au
gust: Osage County at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre and an ACTRA Award of Excellence that same year.
Farb recently shared a Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award for Best Actress with her co-stars in the musical Fun Home.
She has played notable roles in five seasons at the Stratford Festival, including the leads in Romeo and Juliet and The Diary of Anne Frank, Cordelia in King Lear, and Mary Tudor in The Last Wife and The Virgin Trial.
Besides being one of Broadway’s hottest tickets, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is also the most awarded new play in theatre history, according to its producers, having won 25 major U.S. awards, including six Tony Awards, with one of those for Best Play. It also won 24 major theatre awards in the U.K., the producers say, including a record-breaking nine Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.
The two-part play, written by Jack Thorne, J.K. Rowling and John Tiffany, features a grownup Harry, now married with three children, working at the Ministry of Magic and struggling to relate to his youngest son, Albus, who is friends with Scorpius, son of Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy.
Moving into the lead roles of Cursed Child are James Snyder as Harry; Diane Davis as Ginny Potter and Nicholas Podany as Albus Potter; Matt Mueller as Ron Weasley, Jenny Jules as Hermione Granger and Jonno Roberts as Draco Malfoy.
The new cast will begin performances March 20 at New York’s Lyric Theatre.