Subject: James Earl Jones set for Broadway return

US actor James Earl Jones is to return to Broadway at the age of 83 in a zany comedy five years his junior.

The stage and screen veteran will play an eccentric grandfather in You Can't Take It With You, a comedy by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1937.

The new production begins previews in August and will open on 28 September.

Jones trod the boards last year in a production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic in London.

The show, which cast Jones and Vanessa Redgrave as bickering lovers Benedick and Beatrice, drew withering reviews with its unconventional, age-blind casting.

Best known as the sonorous voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars films and Mufasa in The Lion King, Jones was last seen on Broadway in 2012 in Gore Vidal's play The Best Man.

First staged in 1936, You Can't Take It With You details the comic mishaps that ensue when an impending marriage brings the bride-to-be's family of oddballs together with her groom's strait-laced relatives.

The play was filmed by Frank Capra two years later and went on to be named best picture at the Academy Awards in 1939.

Jones, who won Tonys in 1969 for The Great White Hope and in 1987 for Fences, received an honorary Academy Award in 2011.