Orlando Bloom will make his Broadway debut in a new production of Romeo & Juliet.

The 36-year-old actor will star as the tragic hero Romeo in director David Leveaux's staging of William Shakespeare's classic love story, which will begin previews at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York on August 24 with an official opening date of September 19. Condola Rashad will play Juliet in the production, but director David insists he isn't trying to make a political point by casting a black actress in the role opposite a white actor as Romeo.

"They could have been any number of different ethnicities. The two actors I wanted to be together producing sparks just happened to be those two and I followed my nose in casting the families. There was nothing simple about that choice but I'm not about to turn a contemporary version of Shakespeare into a sociological or political point. We know there are families from one background or another who would reject their children getting together with someone from another group. Romeo and Juliet reject that notion. It is still the case that children try to oppose the cultural expectations thrust upon them, the rigidity of tribes, the rigidity of fundamentalism," he told The New York Times.