TheatreWorks founding artistic director Robert Kelley stages the West Coast debut for his California company which officially opens October 7 at Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts for a run through Oct. 29. Composer Flaherty and lyricist-librettist Ahrens — the team behind Ragtime, Once On This Island and My Favorite Year— penned this musical based on the novel by Sherley Anne Williams. The 19th century-set tale is "about the lives of two real women living in the antebellum South" — "a rebellious slave girl and an abandoned southern belle."

Mugleston (Nine, Into The Woods) appears in the work opposite Carly Hughes (Dreamgirls, Aida, Footloose) as the title character Dessa Rose in a cast that also features Travis Poelle (Buddy! The Buddy Holly Story), John Eric Parker (Rent, All Shook Up) and TheatreWorks veterans C. Kelly Wright (Into the Woods, A Little Princess), C. J. Blankenship (A Little Night Music, Ragtime), Ian Leonard (My Antonia, Jane Eyre) and Mary Melnick (Sunday in the Park with George). Cathleen Ridley, Dawn L. Troupe and Brian Frutiger round out the ensemble.

The season continues at TheatreWorks with David Grimm's The Learned Ladies of Park Avenue (Nov. 29-Dec. 23), Anthony Clarvoe's Ambition Facing West (Jan. 17-Feb. 11, 2007), Joanna McClelland Glass' Trying (March 7-April 1, 2007) and Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman's Follies (April 4-29, 2007).

Tickets to Dessa Rose at TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center, 500 Castro St. (at Mercy), are available through (650) 903-6000 and online at theatreworks.org.