Multi-Tony Award winner Irene Worth will star in the New York-based, Bat Theatre Company's production of Chere Maitre , adapted, directed and co-starring Peter Eyre, running Nov. 21-Dec. 20.

Worth is the recipient of three Tony Awards (Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth, Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers). Eyre made his Broadway debut as Polonius in the Ralph Fiennes Hamlet, for which Eyre received an Outer Critics nomination for Outstanding Broadway Debut.

Worth and Eyre began working together in 1973, co-starring in a production of The Seagull at the Chichester Festival. The following year they played opposite each other in Ghosts and Hamlet (with Eyre as Hamlet, Worth as Gertrude). The two originally performed Chere Maitre at the Almeida Theatre in London.

Chere chronicles the extraordinary friendship between two masters of 19th century literature: Georges Sand and Gustave Flaubert, adapted directly from the letters and correspondence between the two authors.

The Bat Theatre Company was formed in 1997 as a group of veteran theatre artists acting as producers. The "Bat Pack" includes: Jim "Chairman of the Board" Simpson, Mac Wellman, Kyle Chepulis, Eduardo Machado, Jan Leslie Harding, Mike Nolan, and Laurie Stone. Previous Bat productions have included Herman Daniel Farrell III's Bedfellows, Karen Finley's Return of the Chocolate Smeared Women, Rogelio Martinez's They Still Mambo in Heaven, The Black Hole serial, and Adobe Theatre's serial, Larry and the Werewolf. The Bat Theatre Company's production of Chere Maitre, starring Irene Worth and Peter Eyre, plays at their own Flea Theatre (41 White Street), Nov. 21 - Dec. 20. For reservations or more information, call (212) 226-0051.

-- By Sean McGrath