The production's Broadway debut in 1979 at the Booth Theatre was produced by Richmond Crinkley and Nelle Nugent, and directed by Jack Hofsiss.
[2][3] Subsequent productions starred actors including Philip Anglim, David Bowie,[4] Mark Hamill, Bruce Davison, and Bradley Cooper.
The Elephant Man opens with Frederick Treves, an up-and-coming surgeon, meeting his new employer Francis Carr-Gomm, the administrator of the London Hospital.
Ross, the manager of a freak show, invites a crowd on Whitechapel Road to come view John Merrick, the Elephant Man.
Merrick tries to converse with three freak show "pinheads", or people suffering from microcephaly and mental retardation.
The "pinheads" go onstage to sing "We Are the Queens of the Congo", but the police will not allow Merrick to perform, because they consider his condition "indecent".
Ross decides that Merrick is more trouble than he is worth, steals his savings, and sends him back to London.
Carr-Gomm announces that, due to a letter he had printed in The Times, the people of London have donated enough money to allow Merrick to live at the hospital for life.
Merrick dissolves into tears as Treves tells Mrs. Kendal that it is the first time a woman has ever shaken his hand.
Mrs. Kendal's high society friends visit Merrick and bring him gifts while he builds a model of St. Phillip's church with his one good hand.
When Treves comments that all of humanity is a mere illusion of heaven, Merrick says that God should have used both hands.
Merrick's new friends—Bishop How, Gomm, the Duchess, Princess Alexandra, Treves, and Mrs. Kendal—all comment upon how, in different ways, they see themselves reflected in him.
Merrick refuses to help Ross, finally standing up to him after suffering years of abuse at his hands.
Treves has a nightmare that he has been put on display while Merrick delivers a lecture about his terrifying normality, his rigidity, and the acts of cruelty he can commit upon others "for their own good".
A 2014 revival, starring Bradley Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, and Alessandro Nivola,[6] opened at the Booth Theatre on 7 December for a 13-week engagement (through 15 February 2015).
[7] In May 2015, the production, again starring Cooper, Clarkson, and Nivola, opened at London's Theatre Royal Haymarket for a limited 12-week run from 19 May until 8 August.
It was directed by David Hitchenson and starred Gerard Murphy as John Merrick the elephant man; Jeremy Clyde as Frederick Treves the doctor; Anna Massey as actress Mrs.