Turner will return to the production — which does not employ understudies — for the Feb. 21 matinee, when performances will resume. (The Feb. 18 performance was also canceled due to Turner's knee injury; the famed actress will wear a knee brace and utilize a cane when she returns to the production.)
MCC co-artistic director Bernie Telsey said in a statement, "Kathleen Turner personifies the attitude of the Broadway trouper. Against any odds, she must, and will, make her performance."
The Third Story is scheduled to end its limited run Off-Broadway March 15.
Turner (The Graduate) and playwright Busch (Die Mommie Die!) are joined onstage by Jennifer Van Dyck (Hedda Gabler), Scott Parkinson (The Coast of Utopia), Sarah Rafferty (Gemini) and Jonathan Walker (Twentieth Century). (Van Dyck, Parkinson and Walker appeared in the La Jolla run.)
Previously seen at the La Jolla Playhouse, Busch's The Third Story centers on "a mother and son screenwriting team [who] hunker down in Omaha after fleeing Commie-obsessed 1940's Hollywood," according to production notes. "A romantically-inclined but socially inept princess makes a deal with an ancient witch. And tommy guns meet test tubes as a way-too-well-dressed first lady of the mob forms a desperate alliance with a cloning scientist whose experiments have had, um, less-than-consistent results. Gangster flicks, fairy tales and B-movie sci-fi collide in this epic comic fable from the imagination of Charles Busch." Third Story replaced Neil LaBute's The Break of Noon on the MCC schedule. The latter work, to be seen in September 2009, was moved to avoid conflicting with the upcoming Broadway transfer of LaBute's reasons to be pretty (previously seen Off-Broadway at MCC).
Next up for the troupe is the musical Coraline (May 6-June 20, 2009), featuring music and lyrics by Stephin Merritt and a book by David Greenspan based on the novel by Neil Gaiman.
Tickets to Third Story at The Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, are available by calling (212) 279-4200. For more information visit mcctheater.org.
