Nick Offerman, the actor who gained fame as ultra-masculine moustachioed politico Ron Swanson in the TV comedy Parks and Recreation, is to play one of US fiction’s most vivid characters: Ignatius J Reilly, from John Kennedy Toole’s novel A Confederacy of Dunces.
Offerman will take the lead in a stage adaptation of the book, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher, known for his on-screen period dramas Stage Beauty and The Duchess. The production will debut at the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston this November.
Like Swanson, Reilly is a disdainful, massively self-regarding man who is secretly fascinated with those around him – unlike Swanson, he is also a colossal slob. Offerman heralded the chance to play him, saying in a statement: “I am simply tumescent at the prospect of assaying the beloved character of Ignatius J Reilly with our team of magnificent and weird artistic champions. It seems only fitting that I should follow seven seasons of Ron Swanson’s beef with the pudding of Toole’s corpulent fop.”
He has recently appeared in major Hollywood comedies such as We’re the Millers and two Jump Street movies, and will next be seen in a pair of films that made a splash with their respective Sundance debuts this year: Robert Redford’s Bill Bryson adaptation A Walk in the Woods, and the prize-winning Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. He also has a small role in Terrence Malick’s new film Knight of Cups. As well as his acting, he runs the Offerman Wood Shop, a woodworking business making furniture and boats.
In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer prize for A Confederacy of Dunces, which has seen frequent failed film adaptations: Stephen Fry was once commissioned to develop a screenplay version, while the likes of Will Ferrell, Zack Galifianakis, Richard Farley and three outsized Johns – Belushi, Candy, and Goodman – have all been lined up for the role of Reilly. There was even a one-off staging of the Steven Soderbergh-scripted Will Ferrell version, with the actor appearing alongside Mos Def, Paul Rudd, Jesse Eisenberg and others at a reading at the Nantucket film festival in 2003.
