Veteran avant-garde director Andrei Serban will stage a new production of Aeschylus' classic Seven Against Thebes at La MaMa's Annex Theater May 10-27, 2001. Elizabeth Swados will compose original music.

Anyone who's seen any of Serban's work over his three-decade-plus career should know his approach to Thebes won't be straightforward. The director has often tackled the Greeks over the years, most notably Agamemnon at Lincoln Center in 1977, and then, later, in Central Park. His most recent New York credits have been at the Public Theater, including a fairly well-received Cymbeline in Central Park a few seasons back, and last season's Hamlet, starring Liev Shreiber. The latter production, which was uniformly panned, featured stylized movement, incestuous undertones in the relationship between Ophelia and Laertes, a Polonius who carried a small tape recorder, spies who peered out of little windows in the set and a moment where the cast came on stage hoisting the posters of other famous Hamlets.

The Rumanian-born Serban made his U.S. debut at La MaMa.

La MaMa is located at 74A E. 4th Street. For more information, call (212) 475-7710.

--By Robert Simonson