Phylicia Rashad planning return to Broadway in Dominique Morisseau’s ‘Skeleton Crew’

NEW YORK — The Dean is returning to the Great White Way.

Phylicia Rashad will star in the Broadway production of Dominique Morisseau’s acclaimed “Skeleton Crew” this winter.

The trailblazing Tony Award winner will star as Faye, a Detroit auto factory worker and union leader in the drama to be presented by Manhattan Theatre Club.

The four-person play, which is set during the Great Recession of 2008, is being directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson with previews beginning Dec. 21.

“I am thrilled that Phylicia Rashad will join the 2022 Manhattan Theatre Club Broadway production of ‘Skeleton Crew.’ … I have long been an admirer of her tremendous talent and am proud to have her as a member of the company of Dominique Morisseau’s brilliant and powerful play,” Manhattan Theatre Club artistic director Lynne Meadow said in a statement.

The last part in a three-play series about the Motor City that includes “Detroit ’67” and “Paradise Blue,” the “taut and vibrantly acted drama” starred Lynda Gravatt, Wendell B. Franklin, Jason Dirden and Nikiya Mathis in a 2016 production produced by the Atlantic Theater Company.

Best known as one of TV’s most beloved matriarchs – Claire Huxtable on “The Cosby Show” during the 1990s – the four-time Emmy Award nominee last appeared on Broadway in 2009 as matriarch Violet Weston in the Broadway production of Tracey Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “August: Osage County.”

In 2008, Rashad portrayed Big Mama in an all-Black revival of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” directed by her sister Debbie Allen.

In 2004, she won a best-actress Tony Award for “A Raisin in the Sun” – becoming the first Black actress in history to win that honor.

The 72-year-old mother of two was recently named dean of the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts at her alma mater, Howard University in Washington, D.C.

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