Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd are returning to Broadway together, two decades after they last shared a stage, and this time they are bringing Sarah Paulson, Greta Lee and Martin Freeman along for a play built almost entirely on silence. The production, Bess Wohl's Small Mouth Sounds, will open at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 18, 2027, with previews beginning February 18, 2027.
According to Time Out New York, the show will also star Isaac Powell, who previously appeared on Broadway in Once on This Island and West Side Story. The play follows six people who retreat to a remote meditation center, only to confront the very problems they were hoping to escape, per the same report. Director Joe Mantello, who is behind the reunion, last worked with Roberts and Rudd on Broadway in April 2006, when the pair starred together in a revival of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, a production Mantello also directed and which co-starred Bradley Cooper, according to Concord Theatricals.
A Pedigreed Team Behind the Silence
Wohl, who wrote Small Mouth Sounds, arrives at this production riding an extraordinary run: she won the 2026 Tony Award for Best Play and the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Liberation, becoming only the fourth female playwright in Tony Awards history to win Best Play, as reported by Broadway News. That outlet also notes Wohl previously earned a Best Play Tony nomination for her 2020 Broadway debut, Grand Horizons. Wohl has said the idea for Small Mouth Sounds came to her after she attended a silent retreat herself with a friend, secretly taking notes and setting a goal to write a play that opens with the line “We shall now observe silence,” according to the American Conservatory Theater.
Sarah Paulson brings her own recent Broadway momentum to the cast; the article notes she most recently starred on Broadway in Appropriate, the Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play for which she won the 2024 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play, per the Tony Awards. Greta Lee, meanwhile, has Broadway credits including The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and La Bete, per the same Time Out report. Martin Freeman, the Emmy-winning actor known for Sherlock and The Responder, will be making his Broadway debut in the production, according to Broadway.com.
From a 90-Seat Black Box to a Broadway House
Small Mouth Sounds has traveled a long way to reach a 1,000-plus-seat Broadway house. The play originally premiered Off-Broadway in March 2015 at Ars Nova's 90-seat theater under director Rachel Chavkin, then moved to the 199-seat Pershing Square Signature Center in 2016 before embarking on a national tour in 2017, according to Wikipedia. The Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where the play will now open, was built in 1928 by the Shubert Organization for the legendary actress Ethel Barrymore and seats 1,058, per Wikipedia's entry on the venue. A New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report says the Shuberts opened the Ethel Barrymore on West 47th Street in 1928. A New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission report says the Barrymore was among the numerous theaters constructed by the Shubert Organization to the designs of Herbert J. Krapp.
According to IBDB, Fool for Love opened off-Broadway at the Circle Repertory Theatre on May 26, 1983, and then transferred to the Douglas Fairbanks Theatre on November 27, 1983. According to IBDB, A Chorus Line transferred from the Public to Broadway on July 25, 1975, after its off-Broadway run closed on July 13.
Critic David Cote once described the piece as an exquisite play set at an upstate meditation retreat where six strangers take, and mostly break, a vow not to speak, as cited by Time Out. The design team assembled for the Broadway transfer includes Tony winner Chloe Lamford on sets, Tony winner Jack Knowles on lighting, An D'Huys on costumes, Tom Gibbons on sound design, JA Collective on movement, and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw contributing music, per the outlet's reporting. The production will offer pre-sale access registration ahead of tickets going on general sale.
Mantello's Busy Season and a Cross-Show Ticket Deal
Mantello arrives at Small Mouth Sounds fresh off his third Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play, won in June 2026 for his revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, following earlier directorial wins for Take Me Out in 2003 and Assassins in 2004, according to the Kansas City Broadway Series. He is also taking on double duty for the 2026-2027 Broadway season, first directing Bruce Norris's Downstate at the Booth Theatre this fall before moving on to Small Mouth Sounds at the Barrymore in the spring, as reported by New York Theater.
That overlap has produced an unusual marketing wrinkle. Producers Scott Rudin and Barry Diller launched a cross-show promotion linking the two productions, offering a $150 promo code toward Small Mouth Sounds tickets to the first 100 people who buy tickets to Downstate, according to the same New York Theater report. The maneuver effectively uses pre-sale interest in the starry, buzzy Small Mouth Sounds to help drive early ticket sales for the darker, more controversial Downstate this fall.
