NEW YORK — A new stage adaptation of George Orwell’s chilling dystopic novel 1984 will star Olivia Wilde, making her Broadway debut. Producers Sonia Friedman and Scott Rudin said Monday that the play will also star Tom Sturridge and Tony Award-winner Reed Birney. It will begin performances in May at the Hudson Theatre. First published in 1949, Orwell’s classic tale of a society run by Big Brother in which facts are distorted and suppressed in a cloud of “newspeak” has topped the Amazon.com best-seller lists. Olivia Wilde, who recently wrapped films “A Vigilante” and “Life Itself” opposite Oscar Isaac, will play Julia, the woman with whom the dystopian tale’s protagonist, Winston Smith, begins an affair. Reed Birney will play the spy O’Brien. The play arrives in New York after winning acclaim in four different runs in the U.K. (including one on the West End), and after the George Orwell title itself suddenly became a hot topic in the wake of the presidential election. Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan co-adapt and co-direct the production, which on Broadway will also star Wayne Duvall, Carl Hendrick Louis, Nick Mills, Michael Potts, and Cara Seymour.

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