Clybourne Park producer cancels Broadway transfer

The producer of Clybourne Park has cancelled the play's run on Broadway after falling out with its writer, Bruce Norris , according to the New York Post . Norris was due to appear in an acting role in producer Scott Rudin's HBO adaptation of Jonathan Franzen's book The Corrections , but is reported to have pulled out on Monday after three months of contractual wrangling, saying: "I don't like to do pilots." Rudin, regarded as the most powerful producer on Broadway, then axed Clybourne Park, which was due to reach Broadway in the spring, as well as two other Norris plays he was planning to produce in 2013. The theatre is not accepting ticket bookings, while the play's publicists, Boneau/Bryan-Brown , said they were no longer representing the show. Clybourne Park, a lacerating comedy about race and class, made its debut in New York two years ago. Based around the changes in the racial makeup of a Chicago neighbourhood, its UK premiere at the Royal Court in London earned rave reviews, the Guardian's theatre critic Michael Billington writing that it "nails the thorny subject of race relations with a bilious zest that takes one's breath away". The play won the Pulitzer prize for drama last year , and has earned numerous other awards including an Olivier for best new play . Its cancellation has left Jujamcyn Theaters , the company who owns the Broadway venue it would have played, facing losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent, although Rudin is said to have offered them $1.5m (£946,00): a week's takings from another of his productions, the hit South Park musical The Book of Mormon . The cast and crew will also have to find new jobs once the play ends its current run in Los Angeles on 26 February. Jujamcyn Theaters were reported to be contacting other producers in an attempt to salvage the play – in theory not a difficult task as the play is already a proven hit. West End producers traditionally see their roles in more modest terms than their Broadway counterparts, who are notorious for intervening in the production process. When Alan Ayckbourn 's Absurd Person Singular was staged on Broadway in 1973, the producer Philip Langner brought in a statistician to count the number of laughs each act received from the audience and demanded that acts two and three should be reversed.