Artistic director Anne Hamburger has announced that two of the remaining three slots on La Jolla Playhouse's 2000 season have now been filled. The American premiere of David Greig's The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union will go up first, on Aug. 1, for a one-month run. It will be followed, as previously reported by Playbill On-Line, by the world premiere of the new musical comedy Thoroughly Modern Millie, which opens Oct. 1, also for a one-month run.

Based on the hit 1957 movie of the same name, Thoroughly Modern Millie includes 15 songs including three from the film, several more culled from the 1920s, with new music and lyrics added by Jeanine Tesori and Dick Scanlan, respectively, and original songs with music by Tesori & Scanlan. The book is by Richard Morris and Scanlan based on Morris' original story and screenplay. Morris authored The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Direction is by Michael Mayer, whose New York credits include Sideman, A View From the Bridge and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Millie is set in the Jazz Age and looks at a group of flappers who are bobbing their hair, raising their hemlines, entering the workforce and reinventing the rules of love.

Greig's play tells the story of two quarreling Russian astronauts who float in endless orbit above the globe thousands of miles from their loved ones. Back on earth, in places as diverse as Edinburgh, London, Oslo and France, an eclectic group of friends and lovers find it just as difficult to keep their bearings on solid ground.

La Jolla Playhouse is located on the corner of La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road. For ticket and information call (868) 550-1010 or visit www.lajollaplayhouse.com -- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent