Betty Buckley Offered Sweet Bird at La Jolla, Greif Directing, Oct. 17 | Playbill

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News Betty Buckley Offered Sweet Bird at La Jolla, Greif Directing, Oct. 17 Broadway musical star Betty Buckley has been offered the lead role of Alexandra Del Lago in the upcoming La Jolla Playhouse revival of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth.

Broadway musical star Betty Buckley has been offered the lead role of Alexandra Del Lago in the upcoming La Jolla Playhouse revival of Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth.

Rent director and La Jolla artistic director Michael Greif will direct. Buckley's agent Matthew Sullivan said the offer is on the table but that talks are in the very early stages.

Sweet Bird, considered one of Williams' lesser classics, tells the story of the intertwined fates of Del Lago, a faded movie star, and Chance Wayne, a gigolo running out of chances. The play was revived last year in Washington, D.C., with Elizabeth Ashley and Michael Hayden in the leads.

If Buckley accepted the role, it would mark her second non-musical assignment this year. The actress is primarily known for her musical credits, including Cats and Sunset Boulevard. She recently starred in the Vineyard Theatre's staging of Nicky Silver's The Eros Trilogy, in which Buckley played two different mothers. Buckley is currently performing her cabaret act at the Cafe Carlyle on New York's Upper East Side. Sweet Bird will run Oct. 17-Nov. 14, 1999.

* Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth and Joe Orton's Loot, directed by Neel Keller, will be part of La Jolla Playhouse's 1999 six-play subscription season. The two plays join the previously announced American premiere of the new musical Jane Eyre, directed by two-time Tony Award-winner John Caird.

The premiere of Jane Eyre will reunite Caird (book & lyrics) with the design team at the Royal Shakespeare Company which helped him win prizes for Les Miserables and Nicholas Nickleby, John Napier and Andreane Neofitou. The music is by Paul Gordon, who also co-wrote the lyrics with Caird.

The musical opens July 25 and runs through Aug. 29, 1999.

Loot plays June 15-July 11, 1999.

Call (619) 550-1010 or visit www.lajollaplayhouse.com.

-- By Robert Simonson and Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent

 
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