Joanna Going joins previously-announced castmembers Roger Rees, Eric Stoltz, Arthur Hanket and Miriam Margolyes in a reading of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan for L.A. Theatre Works' "The Play's The Thing" radio series, taping May 12-16.
Though considered a film actress, Going often takes legit roles, including The Flowering Peach and Off-Broadway's The Maiden's Prayer. Rees recently starred opposite Uma Thurman in The Misanthrope at OB's CSC. Stoltz, of filmdom's "Waterdance" and "Some Kind of Wonderful" appeared on Broadway in Three Sisters and Our Town and in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at OB's Irish Repertory Theater.
Radio performances are taped for broadcast at a later date on KCRW 89.9 FM. The Skirball Cultural Center, site of the tapings, is located at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. Seating is limited and reservations are required. For information and tickets call (310) 827-0889.
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Upcoming in the Radio series:
Film actress Jamie Lee Curtis gets to try a real change of pace, April 28- May 2, when the star of "Halloween I, II" and "H20" and "A Fish Called Wanda" plays Pfeni in a staged reading of The Sisters Rosensweig. Curtis joins previously announced JoBeth Williams (Sarah, the Jane Alexander role) and Caroline Aaron (Gorgeous, the Madeline Kahn role). Also in the cast are John Vickery, repeating his Broadway role as the director fending off Pfeni. Tony Roberts (Victor/Victoria) plays the furrier who wants Sarah to think mink.
According to an L.A. Theatre Works release, Wendy Wasserstein based The Sisters Rosensweig both on Chekhov's Three Sisters and her own family. Wasserstein's older sister did, indeed, live in London as a high-level executive; and sibling Georgette was nicknamed "Gorgeous," just as in the show.
Other Wasserstein plays include An American Daughter (taped last year by LATW, with Mary McDonnell starring), Isn't It Romantic and The Heidi Chronicles.
Barnet Kellman directs the five readings of Rosensweig
July 21-25, Sharon Gless will star in Spread Eagle, a "lost" 1927 Broadway melodrama by George S. Brock and Walter Lister dealing with an American business tycoon who orchestrates the U.S. invasion of Mexico. Edward Asner (Born Yesterday), Kate Asner, Raye Birk and Fred Savage ("The Wonder Years") are also in the cast.
Pretty Fire, Charlayne Woodard's autobiographical solo, engulfs the airwaves June 9-13.
Peter Sagal's Denial, about a lawyer defending an anti-Semitic historian who believes the Holocaust never happened, happens July 7-11. the Long Wharf's longtime artistic director Arvin Brown directs LisaGay Hamilton, Alan Mandell and Max Wright (Twelfth Night).
Ticketbuyers are cautioned that casts for "The Play's The Thing" often change at the last minute, due to the schedules of the stars involved.
-- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent
and David Lefkowitz
