20-Feb-17 – Actor Stacy Keach has found work in Chicago. The 75-year-old international star of stage, film, and television will portray writer and Oak Park native Ernest Hemingway in a play that runs May 19 through June 18 at Goodman Theatre.

Pamplona, by Jim McGrath, follows Hemingway in his later years after winning the 1953 Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. The name of the play refers to the city in Spain where Hemingway, in despair and declining health, is struggling to write a story about rival matadors.

It will be Keach’s second appearance at the Goodman. In 2006, he starred in King Lear, collaborating with artistic director Robert Falls, both of whom were inducted into the 2015 Theater Hall of Fame.

(Right) Stacy Keach with directors Michael Kahn (left in photo) and Robert Falls (right).

Keach says he has been fascinated by Hemingway since as a college student he read In Our Time, a collection of short stories published in 1925.

“I felt as if the author was inside my head, expressing himself with words and attitudes that reflected how I felt, and I became inspired to read everything he wrote.”

The first time he portrayed Hemingway, in 1988, Keach says he was intimidated.

“I felt simply too young to fully appreciate the emotional turmoil he had experienced, due to his failing health and his inability to continue writing. This is why I am so excited with the prospect of revisiting this literary giant now, at the right age to fully explore the essence of his later years.”

Keach’s acting accomplishments are too numerous to even summarize. He is arguably best known for Mike Hammer, Private Eye, a television series in the late 1990s.