Tonight, Thomas Kail ’99 will be offering a very special treat for Wesleyan alumni, students, staff, faculty, and parents at the Circle in the Square Theater on Broadway, in the form of a special performance of Kail’s latest project, Lombardi, which follows the life of famous football coach Vince Lombardi. The event, a fundraiser for Wesleyan, has been months in the making.

“In August, Tommy was corresponding with Vice President for University Relations’ Barbara-Jan Wilson,” wrote Gemma Fontanella Ebstein, Associate Vice President of External Relations at the University, in an e-mail to The Argus. “He mentioned his latest project, Lombardi, which sparked our interest. The play focuses on a famous NFL coach, but its appeal is much broader; it’s really a play about family and life.”

The University decided to leverage these two aspects of the production and, thanks to the support of donations from alumni and parents, is able to dedicate all of the proceeds from the night’s performance to Athletics and Financial Aid. The play will be followed by a conversation featuring Kail and President Michael Roth and a reception featuring an exhibition of memorabilia contributed by the NFL from Lombardi’s career.

This is the second “Wesleyan on Broadway” fundraising event—the first was a performance in Sept. 2008 of In the Heights, also directed by Kail, starring and written by Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, and managed by Bill Sherman ’02. That event drew an attendance of 1,400 and raised $1.5 million that went to support scholarships.

“Fortunately, Wesleyan has a number of alumni doing fabulous things on Broadway, which we try to help promote to regional alumni and parents,” wrote Ebstein, who helped coordinate the event. “Although we’d love to mount a benefit of this scale (or much larger, like In the Heights!), more often, we aren’t staffed to do so.”

Prior to the event, a lottery was held to raffle off some tickets for free. Only students could enter, and in total 25 lucky students won a pair of tickets to the show.

“Thanks to generous sponsors, about 125 students also received complimentary tickets in other ways,” Ebstein wrote. “Adding in those who purchased tickets, there should be about 200 students in the theater, which seats 680 people.”

Lombardi is based off the best-selling biography of the eponymous Green Bay coach, Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Marannis. Adapted and written by Academy Award-winner Eric monson, the play stars Dan Lauria as Lombardi and chronicles the legendary coach’s relationships on and off the field. Lombardi focuses on both its namesake’s family life and his relationships with his players during his rise to one of the most dominant and influential football coaches of all time in the 1960s.

Reviews have so far praised Lauria for his role and cast member Judith Light for her turn as Lombardi’s wife. The play has overall received mixed reviews, although critics have lauded the play for its accessibility and poignancy.

“I know nothing about football, but Lombardi held my attention from start to finish,” wrote drama critic Terry Teachout in a review for the Wall Street Journal. “I thought of my brother, a regular guy from a small Missouri town. I’d take him without a moment’s hesitation. An extremely well-crafted piece of intelligent theater.”