Philadelphia Theatre Company will hang A Picasso, the new two-actor play by Jeffrey Hatcher, May 23-June 22, 2003, offering Philly audiences a world premiere on the PTC mainstage.

John Tillinger, who helmed a Nov. 11 reading of the play, will direct come spring. The new work "takes place at the height of the German occupation of France when Pablo Picasso is brought into Gestapo headquarters in Paris for an interrogation by a mysterious woman named Miss Fischer." She "wants Picasso to authenticate three paintings, each assumed to be a Picasso." The work is billed as "a cat-and-mouse mystery about art, sex, death and the lure of power." Laila Robbins was half the cast in the reading, though casting has not been announced for the upcoming full production.

The reading was part of PTC's STAGES Festival of new play readings. The plays are read with an eye toward offering a forum for the development of new works, but also for possible future production at Philadelphia Theatre Company, now in its 27th season.

PTC launched Daniel Stern's Barbra's Wedding in spring 2002; it will start a commercial run Off-Broadway in February 2003.

Hatcher's plays include Compleat Female Stage Beauty, Three Viewings, Scotland Road, Sockdology and Tuesdays With Morrie. Directors Tillinger's credits include Night Must Fall with Matthew Broderick, Manhattan Theatre Club's House and Garden, Sylvia, A Perfect Ganesh and Lips Together, Teeth Apart, among others. PTC has been in residence at Plays & Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Street, since 1982. For more information about Philadelphia Theatre Company, visit http://www.phillytheatreco.com.

— By Kenneth Jones