Greenberg's The House in Town to Get Premiere at Lincoln Center in May 2006 | Playbill

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News Greenberg's The House in Town to Get Premiere at Lincoln Center in May 2006 The House in Town, a new play by Richard Greenberg, will get its world premiere at Lincoln Center Theater in spring 2006, it was announced. Doug Hughes will direct. Previews begin at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on May 11 for a June 8 opening.

It will be the second new play by the prolific Greenberg to reach New York this season. A Naked Girl on the Appian Way will play at the Roundabout Theatre Company Sept. 9, with an opening on Oct. 6. The ubiquitous Hughes will direct that piece as well.

In the past, LCT has produced Greenberg's Everett Beekin.

The LCT Newhouse season will begin with Third, a new play by Wendy Wasserstein. As first reported by Playbill.com, it will star Jason Ritter, Charles Durning, Gaby Hoffman and Dianne Wiest. Completing the cast is Amy Aquino. It will begin Sept. 29 and open Oct. 24.

Third is a full-length expansion of a one-act that had its premiere at Theatre J in Washington, DC, in early 2004. At the time, it was paired with another one act, Welcome to My Rash. In the one-act version of Third, Laurie Jameson, a veteran professor at a private liberal arts college, and Woodson Bull III (as in "the Third"), her conservative, wrestling jock of a student, face off in a series of confrontations over politics, Shakespeare, and campus culture. Meanwhile, Laurie fends off hot flashes as well a challenging relationship with her college-age daughter.

Durning is the stage and film veteran whose credits include The Best Man, The Gin Game, Inherit the Wind and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tony Award). Hoffman is primarily known for her precocious teen film career, during which she starred in the Nora Ephron films "Sleepless in Seattle" and "This Is My Life." Ritter is the son of the late actor John Ritter. He starred in the series "Joan of Arcadia." His theatre credits include The Distance From Here at the Almeida in London and The Beginning of August at the Atlantic Theater Company Off-Broadway. Dianne Wiest is a two-time Academy Award-winner ("Hannah and Her Sisters," "Bullets Over Broadway"). Her recent New York City credit is Memory House at Playwrights Horizons. Other theatre credits includeSalome, Solitaire on Broadway. She won a Theatre World Award and an Obie Award for The Art of Dining in the early '80s and a second Obie for her work in the plays Other Places and Serenading Louie.

Daniel Sullivan—who piloted Wasserstein's best known titles, The Heidi Chronicles and The Sisters Rosensweig—will direct the work.

Lincoln Center has long been Wasserstein's New York home, the place where her plays An American Daughter and Old Money have been seen. On Third, Wasserstein and Sullivan reunite for the first time since 1997's An American Daughter, which was a critical and popular disappointment for both. Mark Brokaw directed the subsequent Old Money.

Wasserstein's other plays include Isn't It Romantic? and Uncommon Women and Others. Her musical, Pamela's First Musical, premieres in California in 2005-06.

The Newhouse Theatre will also see, as previously announced, a new musical based on Federico Garcia Lorca's famous work, The House of Bernarda Alba. It will begin Jan. 26, 2006, and open on Feb. 23.

The show will be the work of three artists. Michael John LaChiusa composed the music, while playwright Richard Nelson has penned the book. LaChiusa collaborates with Nelson on the lyrics, and Nelson and Graciela Daniele will co direct the work.

The casting of the production, set for winter 2006, has not been announced. However, the current workshop stars Daphne Rubin-Vega, Rosa Arredondo, Yolande Bevan, Candy Buckley, Cindy Cheung, Natascia Diaz, Kecia Lewis, Sally Murphy, Saundra Santiago, Laura Shoop and Nancy Ticotin.

All three artists have worked at Lincoln Center before. LaChiusa's Hello, Again and Marie Christine were produced at the nonprofit. Nelson's Some Americans Abroad and Two Shakespearean Actors were given productions at LCT. Daniele has directed such LCT shows as LaChiusa's Marie Christine and Chronicle of a Death Foretold, as well as such Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens works as Once on This Island and the recent Dessa Rose.

The busy LaChiusa will have two productions this coming season. His See What I Wanna See will be seen at the Public Theater this fall. Ted Sperling directs.

In recent years, Nelson has gotten into the practice of directing his own work. His musical work includes James Joyce's The Dead and My Life With Albertine.

 
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