The Off-Broadway production of Eric Bentley’s 1972 docudrama, ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN, will play its final performance on Sunday, August 2, 2026, at New York City Center Stage (i). See photos and video from the production!
The current cast features two-time Tony Award-winner Norbert Leo Butz as “Abe Burrows,” Emmy nominee T.R. Knight as “Larry Parks,” Tony nominee Harry Lennix as “Paul Robeson,” Emmy winner and Golden Globe nominee Bob Odenkirk as “Lionel Stander,” Golden Globe nominee and Drama Desk Award-winner Molly Ringwald as “Lillian Hellman,” Brooks Ashmanskas, Jason Babinsky, Tony nominee Steven Boyer, Emmy and Grammy winner Adam Kantor, Drama Desk Award winner Frederick Weller, and Grammy winner, Emmy and Academy Award nominee Michael McKean. Melvin Abston, Noah Pyzik, and Bill Timoney complete the cast as understudies.
A rotating all-star cast comes together for a timely and important revival of Eric Bentley‘s landmark play. This electrifying docudrama drops you into the tense world of the 1940s House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings, where fame offered no protection and political pressure could end a career. Using only the original transcripts, the play features the words of artists like Arthur Miller, Jerome Robbins, Paul Robeson, Elia Kazan, Lillian Hellman, Abe Burrows, and Lionel Stander as they faced impossible choices: defend their integrity, protect their careers, or betray their peers. And yet the probing, chilling questions posed by the committee are as powerful as the testimonies themselves, revealing a climate of intimidation and moral conflict that resonates far beyond its time.
