Comic actor Mark Linn-Baker, most recently seen clowning opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in Williamstown's As You Like It, will star in Lee Blessing's one-man play, Chesapeake, at the Second Stage space on Eighth Avenue and 43rd Street. The production will begin previews Sept. 30 for an opening on Oct. 14. Max Mayer will direct. Chesapeake had its world premiere, with Linn-Baker, in June at New York Stage and Film's summer headquarters on the Vassar College campus in Poughkeepsie. (Linn-Baker is a co-founder on NY Stage and Film.) The play, which will also receive a production in December at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, concerns a performance artist's scheme to lay low a right-wing Southern politician -- all with the help of a certain retriever.

Linn-Baker has appeared on Broadway a couple seasons back in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Though the production will be at Second Stage's new theatre, Chesapeake is not a Second Stage production.

-- By Robert Simonson