Bermudian actor Daren Herbert has made headlines in his new home of Toronto, after winning a lead role in the Canadian premiere of the jazz age musical The Wild Party.

Mr Herbert will take on the lead role for the Acting Up Stage Company’s production of the show by Michael John LaChiusa, in a tale of debauched love gone sour, adopted from the 1928 work of US poet Joseph Moncure March.

It’s a new turn for the actor, son of Lilette and Brian Herbert, known for roles in films like Dreamgirls, Hot Tub Time Machine and This Means War, as well as stage roles around the world.

After appearing on screen alongside John Cusack, Beyoncé Knowles and Eddie Murphy, Mr Herbert will return to the stage in 2015 as a black actor in a part traditionally played by white performers, according to The Toronto Star.

The former Warwick Academy student, who cut his teeth on the Bermuda stage with United Dance Productions, will take on the role of Burr, a vaudevillian blackface performer, opposite Cara Rickett as his partner Queenie.

Fraught with racial and sexual tensions, the play’s titular party turns violent, in a performance hailed as “dark, sensual and glittering” after the show’s Broadway debut in 2000.

According to The Star, “complex differences” in Canadian and US public domain law kept both the LaChiusa version of the show and a rival musical by Andrew Lippa from getting produced up north. Toronto previews are scheduled for February 20 at the Berkeley Street Downstairs Theatre.

Mr Herbert was back in Bermuda earlier this summer to deliver intensive acting workshops, telling The Royal Gazette that he hoped in time to “come back and teach on some semblance of a regular basis”.