And so the soon-to-open Dog Day Afternoon, a stage adaptation of Sidney Lumet’s 1975 bank-robbing-and-hostage film, is correcting the narrative.
Directed by Rupert Goold and re-written by Stephen Adly Guirgis, the new, queer-friendly play is primarily about a love story between Sonny (Jon Bernthal) and the trans-aspiring Leon (Esteban Andres Cruz, a “blind, queer, Latiné, trans-nonbinary theater artist“).
Cruz at 1:31 mark: “The whole queerness of the story was shied away from a lot in the film. It’s on record that [Al] Pacino had several moments of pushback with the film being too queer.”
The limited-engagement play, which has been in previews since 3.10.26, opens tomorrow night (3.30) at the August Wilson Theatre. It runs until 6.28.26. Bernthal has never been on the New York stage before. Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays John Cazale‘s Sal character, who takes a bullet in the forehead at the very end.
Lumet’s film was based on an actual 1972 Brooklyn bank robbery that went wrong. Frank Pierson‘s screenplay arose from a LIFE magazine article, “The Boys in the Bank“.
Wiki excerpt: “Frank Pierson was hired to write the screenplay. Aside from Kluge and Moore’s research, Pierson conducted his own. He contacted journalist Randy Wicker, who covered the story of the heist for gay publications, and provided technical assistance regarding Manhattan’s gay nightclub scene. Pierson decided that he wanted to center the story around Wojtowicz, who refused to receive Pierson in prison while he was in a financial dispute with Warner Bros.
“Pierson analyzed the tapes of the interviews and news articles about the robbery, and approached those involved for additional information. Pierson could not define Wojtowicz’s character because a different impression was left on each of the interviewees. The project overwhelmed him, but he could not quit because he had spent his cash in advance. Pierson reviewed his material and found that the unfulfilled promises Wojtowicz made was the common trait. Pierson viewed them as ‘the story of the bank’, and the failure of the robbery.”