Actor-playwright Charles Busch's new play, Shanghai Moon, will have its first full production at Off-Broadway's Drama Dept. this winter, the playwright told Variety. B.D. Wong and Busch will star.

Though Variety characterized it as a "world premiere," the show has an Off-Broadway mounting at Theatre for the New City in 1999. Busch acted in that incarnation as well. At the time he called it a "work in progress" and did not invite the press.

Drama Dept. gave the piece a reading last March. Busch, author of Broadway's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, starred along with Seikya Billman, Marcy McGuigan and Albert Macklin.

The writer told Variety the work was akin to his Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, which had a long run at the Provincetown Playhouse, adding "It's 1931 in Shanghai and I play a British aristocrat's beautiful American born wife, who falls in love with a Chinese war lord. I'm soon hooked on opium and get my ass branded."

Allergist's Wife is still playing on Broadway; a national tour starring Valerie Harper begins Sept. 10 in Denver following summer sitdowns of the Broadway company (including Harper, Michele Lee, Tony Roberts) in Los Angeles and San Francisco. (A new cast recently took over the play on Broadway.) Busch's other plays include Red Scare On Sunset, The Lady In Question and The Green Heart.

No dates have been announced.

—By Robert Simonson