Manhattan Theatre Club revealed five of its seven 2000-2001 titles, including works by Alan Ayckbourn, Rebecca Gilman and David Lindsay Abaire, with Polly Draper set to star in the New York premiere of Blur.

According the MTC brochure, two of the shows are yet to be announced. The five shows offered are as follows. (As usual with such subscriber announcements, the line-up is subject to change.):

• Comic Potential, Alan Ayckbourn's "black comedy/farcical nightmare" of how life might be in the 21st century. The London play, nominated for a Best Comedy Olivier Award, concerns an aspiring screenwriter who finds himself attracted to an "almost human" leading lady in a world where "actors and robotic 'actoids'...are indistinguishable."

• Boy Gets Girl, by Spinning Into Butter author Rebecca Gilman, is a chilling exploration of a woman whose life is changed after a single date in the city. In the era when anyone can create a new identity, the play asks how we can trust "our instincts about people." Michael Maggio directs, following his March 2000 world premiere staging at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.

• Wonder of the World, David Lindsay-Abaire's new play, having its world premiere June 3 by Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC, follows a woman who flees to the honeymoon capital of the world to encounter "a blithely suicidal alcoholic, a salty sea captain...and a gargantuan jar of peanut butter." • Blur, by Melanie Marnich, directed by MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow and starring Polly Draper, is the story of a troubled teenager named Dot, her gang of friends and her harried mother, who is slowly going blind. In 1999, the play won the Francesca Primus Playwriting Prize. Judges hailed the "quirky, elliptical style that lends a captivating and poetic dimension to her play."

• NewYorkers, a musical revue by Glenn Slater and Stephen Weiner, directed by Christopher Ashley, is a satiric, edgy look at Manhattan life.

MTC, the two-space Off-Broadway nonprofit known for championing new works, new writers or unfamiliar titles is coming off a hot spring: Andrew Lippa's The Wild Partygenerated much buzz and will spawn a cast recording, Lindsay-Abaire's Fuddy Meers moved to an independent Off-Broadway run, and one of the hottest tickets in the city was Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, with Linda Lavin, which moves to Broadway in the fall.

For subscription information, call (212) 399-3030, or try the website at www.mtc-nyc.org.

-- By Kenneth Jones