A new stage adaptation of the award-winning 1975 screen hit “Dog Day Afternoon” is selling out on Broadway, with “The Bear” actors Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach playing the lead roles of bank robber Sonny and accomplice Sal.
The play — set in the summer of 1972 with the Vietnam War looming, former President Richard Nixon in the oval office, and prison riots at Attica a year earlier — tells the story of a bank robbery gone awry. The robbers turn the tide on law enforcement as empathetic New Yorkers side with the disenfranchised hostage-takers, as crowds swell outside the robbery site.
The play, by Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, features themes including economic disparity, gender bias, and policing, as relevant today as they were more than 50 years ago when the movie was released. \
Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach join host Robin Young.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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