Those anxiously awaiting Tony Kushner's newest opus, Henry Box Brown, will have to wait a little longer: the production's Spring '97 world premiere in London has been postponed.

A co-production between New York's Public Theater and London's Royal National Theatre, Kushner's drama about American slavery and the British textile industry was scheduled to debut at the National's Lyttleton stage in the spring with a half-British, half-American cast. According to Fiona Walsh, National Theatre press representative, the Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright has not completed work on the play, and as a result, the production has "gone away" from the theatre's spring schedule.

Although a full production won't be mounted, director George C. Wolfe will instead workshop the play at the National, tentatively in April. A scheduled workshop of Henry this fall at the Public was scrapped because of the script delay.

Carol Fineman, press spokesperson for the Public Theater, co-producer of the play, confirmed the postponement, adding that it was uncertain how public - if at all - the National Theatre's workshop would be.

No dates have been announced for the eventual production of Henry at the National nor its subsequent American premiere at the Public. For those in need of a Kushner fix until the arrival of Henry should lay their hands on the December 29 Sunday New York Times Magazine for a two-page Kushner play that conjures up a meeting in hell between Roy Cohn and Communist witch-hunter G. David Schine.

-- By Andrew Ku