Just days after announcing "final weeks," Donald Margulies' Off-Broadway drama, Collected Stories, has chosen its closing date: Sunday, July 27. The show began April 30, played 23 previews, opened May 20, and will close after 80 regular performances.

Veteran actress Maria Tucci plays the aging writer, and newcomer Debra Messing plays her young protegee, in Collected Stories, a two character drama about mentoring and plagiarism. Strong reviews and audience interest had initially pushed the show into an extended run.

The author is Donald Margulies, who previously provided MTC with What's Wrong With This Picture? (which had a brief Broadway run) The Loman Family Picnic and Sight Unseen. The latter extended into an open-ended run. Margulies' most recent NY work was last season's The Model Apartment at Primary Stages.

Lisa Peterson directed Collected Stories' world premiere at South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa, CA last November (which won an Outstanding Writing award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle March 17) and started rehearsing the New York version April 1. Peterson staged Tony Kushner's Slavs! and Margulies' Model Apartment Off Broadway

Tucci debuted on Broadway in 1963's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore and garnered a Tony nomination for her work in The Rose Tattoo. Messing appeared Off-Broadway in Four Dogs And A Bone and Paul Rudnick's The Naked Truth. Designing Stories will be Tom Lynch (sets), Jess Goldstein (costumes), Kenneth Posner (lighting) and Mark bennett (sound).

The prolific Margulies is currently working on a one-act which will complete his three-part Broken Sleep, bowing this summer at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. The other two parts consisted of a short play that has already bowed at the Actors Theatre of Louisville and a 40-minute musical he's co-writing with Michael John LaChiusa of Hello Again and The Petrified Prince.

For tickets ($45) and information on Collected Stories call (212) 581-1212.

-- By Harry Haun and David Lefkowitz