Sticks and Bones Won't Hurt Richard Chamberlain

Richard Chamberlain is returning to the priesthood. The 80-year-old Golden Globe winner will star as Father Donald in an off-Broadway revival of Sticks and Bones, David Rabe's play about a blind Vietnam War vet's homecoming.

Staged by out director Scott Elliott, the New Group production is scheduled to begin in October and run through December 14 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

Sticks and Bones is "a savage and savagely comic portrait of an average American family pulled apart by the return of a son from the Vietnam War," according to press notes about the revival. "Ozzie and his wife Harriet are overjoyed to see their eldest son David again, but the furies that haunt David begin to overwhelm them and their happy-go-lucky younger son Rick, forcing Ozzie to make a stand for the values he can't bear to let go."

Led by Oscar winner Holly Hunter and Bill Pullman, the cast also includes Nadia Gan, Morocco Omari, Ben Schnetzer, and Raviv Ullman.

Sticks and Bones, which premiered off-Broadway in 1971, transferred to Broadway the following year and won the Tony Award for Best Play. It was adapted into a 1973 television movie.

Best known as the titular doctor in the 1960s series Dr. Kildare and as Father Ralph de Bricassart in the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds, Chamberlain publicly came out as gay in 2003 with the release of his memoir, Shattered Love. He made headlines in 2010 when he told The Advocatethat he "wouldn't advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out."

Chamberlain's theater credits include Broadway revivals of The Night of the Iguana, Blithe Spirit, My Fair Lady, and The Sound of Music.

For tickets and more information about Sticks and Bones visit TheNewGroup.org.