Beth Henley, long absent from the New York stage until last season's Impossible Marriage at the Roundabout, is readying another new play for Off-Broadway. Family Week, a five-character play about a family visiting an inmate at a "treatment center," will play at Off Broadway's Century Center Theatre, starting previews March 28 and opening April 10 (dates recently moved up from March 24 and April 6, respectively).

Ulu Grosbard (The Subject Was Roses, American Buffalo) will direct the piece, slated for an open run. According to a production spokesperson at the Richard Kornberg office, Jean Doumanian and Ron Kastner are producing the comedy-drama, with Robert Cole serving as general manager.

Carol Kane, who appeared in four other Henley plays in New York -- The Lucky Spot, The Debutante Ball, Signature and Control Freaks - stars opposite Angelina (fka "Angie") Phillips, whose recent roles include Look Back in Anger at CSC and the Roundabout's All My Sons.

Family Week is set -- no, not in the south, but in an Arizona desert recovery center. Claire (Phillips) is grieving the loss of a child and suffering an impending divorce. Her mother, Lina (played by M. Butterfly's Rose Gregorio), her sister, Ricky (Kane), and her daughter, Kay (young Julia Weldon), try to help her deal with the past. Only they discover they're part of the problem. The four actresses also take turns playing therapists at the clinic.

Designing Family Week are John Arnone (sets), Clifford Capone (costumes), Paul Gallo (lighting) and T. Richard Fitzgerald (sound). Family Week author Henley is best known for her Pulitzer-winning Crimes of the Heart, as well as The Wake Of Jamey Foster (on Broadway in 1982) and The Miss Firecracker Contest.

-- By David Lefkowitz